


We Remain the Same

by ShastaFirecracker



Series: Florence 'verse [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Canon Disabled Character, Domestic Fluff, Gen, Hospitals, Law Student Sam, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mechanic Dean, Professor Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-04-15 11:54:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4605771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShastaFirecracker/pseuds/ShastaFirecracker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the first couple years of their relationship, the Novak-Winchester household has three major encounters with hospitals, illness and injury, love and loss, and perseverance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. My Black Eye Casts No Shadow

“Pick up, pick up, pick up,” Sam chants into his cell, one hand on the steering wheel, heart pounding. The ringing on the other end is incessant and maddening. Finally it ends, and Castiel's voice starts to say _“If you are one of my students, you aren't supposed to have this number. Contact me at C dot Novak at”_

Sam hangs up, curses and bangs the steering wheel.

Within five minutes, he's at Cas' building. He forgets to lock the car door, pounds up the stairs, heedless of neighbors, bile in his throat. He skids to a halt at Cas' door and knocks loud and constant. He fishes up his phone and dials Cas' number again to add emphasis.

Within a couple of minutes, he hears noise inside the apartment. He doesn't let up knocking; he nearly punches Cas in the nose when the door jerks out from under his hand.

Cas is wearing a bathrobe, arms folded tight, and he looks flushed and disheveled and altogether pissed. _“Stop,”_ he snaps.

Sam pushes inside. “Where's Dean?”

Cas shuts the door behind Sam and says, “What do you want?” And, as if the words trigger his better sense, the anger slides from his expression and turns to worry. “Sam, what-”

“I have to,” Sam says, shoving his hair back from his temple. “I, ah fuck, where's Dean, Cas?”

“He's,” Cas says, flailing, “he's, no, look, tell me what's going on.”

“I-”

“You have to tell _me,_ Sam.”

Sam takes a shaky breath. He hates saying it. It makes it real. “There was a car accident,” he says. “I'm going to the hospital. There was a bad accident.”

Cas' eyes go saucer-wide. He opens his mouth but Sam beats him to the question.

“Bobby and Ellen, drunk driver,” Sam rambles. “Is Dean asleep, wake him up, where is he, I gotta. We're going to the hospital, I don't know how bad it is. Ellen, Ellen's okay,” he corrects himself immediately. “Ellen called me. Bobby, we don't know.”

“Sam, stop,” Cas says, hand out to touch Sam's arm and Sam looks at it like he doesn't know what it is. “Stop, I'll get Dean and we'll go.”

“Hurry,” Sam pleads.

Cas looks scared but conflicted. “It'll be a minute,” he says. “It'll be a – I'll just, I'll get him, hold on.” He shakes his head, turns, goes to the bedroom door and slips inside.

Sam stands there feeling too much and too little all at once. He puts his shaking hands together to still them; wipes them on his pants, rubs at his mouth. Something catches up with him way too late: mop of near-black sex hair, visible hickeys, Cas' bare feet and shins. There isn't any other reason why neither Cas nor Dean would answer their phones.

“Goddammit,” Sam mutters, pacing the living room. Irritation surges in his gut. They're like goddamn rabbits. Would it kill them to get their heads out of each other's asses and remember that the rest of the world still exists?

And, fuck, what's taking so long? It's been almost five minutes.

He's too pissed at them to care about being scarred for life, so he marches over to the bedroom door and knocks firmly. “Dean,” he calls.

He doesn't hear anything. He leans his ear to the door. “That was Sam,” he hears Cas saying, quiet but firm. “Move your fingers... look at me. Bend your knees. How's your circulation? Can you sit up?”

Sam jerks his head back. Okay, yeah, he does still care about being scarred for life.

But then... scorching anger sweeps through him, undifferentiated, undirected. Sam doesn't take being frightened well, and being unable to reach Dean in a moment of desperation has scared the wits out of him. Having to go through Cas as a middleman – waiting out here for Dean to get un-bondaged or whatever – heartbeat pounding in his ears, imagining each beat is Bobby's last – Sam wants to scream.

He feels a sting and realizes he's chewed the skin around the side of his thumbnail until he hit quick. A smooth pin-head of blood wells up, then catches the edge of his fingernail and seeps sideways into the groove, staining his nail from beneath. He clenches his fist around the thumb, grinding his teeth.

The bedroom door cracks open and Cas steps out, still looking back over his shoulder.

Sam looms, so that the second Cas turns to look where he's going he nearly jumps out of his skin. “What's taking so long?” Sam hisses.

Cas stiffens. “It takes the time it takes,” he says shortly. “Since you're here, would you get a glass of orange juice, please?”

The feeling in Sam now is past anger, past fear; it's just a sort of screaming white noise that makes it hard for him to hear his own thoughts. “No,” Sam snaps, a little too loud, verging on hysterical, “I want you to let my brother out of your goddamn – _sex torture dungeon_ and let him come be with his _family!”_

It only takes the space of a breath for mortification to seep through the cracks in Sam's fury. His white noise of righteousness dulls, stains shame-red.

There's a silence so profound Sam can hear his heart thudding, he can hear Cas' breathing, he can hear rustling in the bedroom. Sam's sure it shows on his face: he knows the words that just fell out of his mouth were monstrous. He _knows_ he didn't mean them, and by the look of disappointed understanding on his face, Cas also knows he didn't mean them, but they can't be unsaid. Cas' spine is military-straight. Sam stews in horror and can't meet his eyes.

Quiet and precise, Cas says, “Dean's blood sugar is low. If you don't mind, would you pour a small glass of orange juice. There are also some peanut butter crackers on the counter. Some of those. Please.” He turns and slips back into the bedroom, closing the door slowly, carefully.

Wordlessly, Sam turns and goes to the kitchen.

He feels floaty, dissociated. He stops in the kitchen and looks at the fridge, looks at nothing, looks at air. The fear is gone, all gone. If his heart weren't still thudding so sickly-hard against his too-tight ribs he could almost believe nothing was wrong. Why can't nothing be wrong? Why is this happening? Why is... why...

He can't. His breath catches abruptly in his throat. It's _Bobby._ He can't _do_ this. He catches himself against the counter when his legs go watery. His palms are hot, his toes are freezing, his face is sweating, he wants to puke. What if Bobby's dead? _He can't do this._

“Sam?”

He looks up, across the kitchen counter. It's Dean, threadbare jeans and too many shirts and hair a little wild but so, so ordinary, so himself, that Sam wants to cry. He honestly did not realize how badly he'd needed to see his big brother right now. The sight alone puts some steel back in his spine and some muscle back in his legs. The icy vise relents around his chest and he sucks in a breath.

“It's...” Sam says weakly, pushing away from the counter.

Dean steps out from the bedroom door. Sam finally registers that he looks pale as bleached bone. “Cas said,” he says. “Bobby?”

Sam's throat gets too tight to speak. He breaks his gaze from Dean and looks around the counters instead. There's a mug in the dish drainer and he grabs it, pops the fridge open.

“Sammy,” Dean says, walking into the kitchen and reaching out for Sam's arm.

Sam's hand is shaking but he successfully sloshes some orange juice into the mug.

“Do you know anything, how bad it is, how...”

Sam clears his throat painfully and sticks the mug out towards Dean. Movement across the room catches his eye and he glances over to see Cas striding towards the kitchen, buttoned down into too-formal suit and coat, face blank and hard.

Dean waves the mug away. “No, I'm good, we've got to -”

Cas steps in, takes the mug and presses it towards Dean with a look of pure steel. “Drink it,” he orders.

Dean takes the mug and drinks without pausing to object or even think. Sam looks away. Cas holds out his hand, and after a moment's confusion Sam remembers the crackers he was supposed to pick up. He looks around. Cas shakes his head, goes straight to a box by the toaster and pulls out several crinkly plastic packets.

Dean knocks back the last of the juice and Cas takes the mug away, sets it in the sink. “Sam,” he says in the same ordering tone, and Sam gives him a wary look. “Hold out your hand.”

Frowning, Sam does so. Fine tremors wrack his fingers. His hand jerks once and Sam curls his fist up and hides his hands in his pockets.

Cas hands one of the packs of crackers to Sam, presses another onto Dean. “I'm driving,” he says, brooking no argument, and sweeps out the apartment door with Winchesters in his wake.

\---

In the hospital hallway, Ellen is on the brothers in a heartbeat, her mama bear hug not fazed for a second by the fact that Sam and Dean both dwarf her. “Boys,” she says, hoarse. There are a couple of butterfly bandages on her face and left arm, lots of angry red scrapes to go with them.

“Christ, Ellen,” Dean mutters, hugging her too hard.

“How's Bobby?” Sam asks, finally letting go.

“In surgery,” Ellen says, crossing her arms, rubbing a hand over her mouth and up her cheek to prod at the bandage there. “He was thrown real hard, hit his head. But they, ah, they said they're more worried about his back. Might be broke.”

Dean abruptly walks to the nearest chair and sits down hard. He presses the heels of his hands into his temples.

“Is,” Sam starts, but is interrupted by a blonde cannonball to the solar plexus. “Oof.”

“Sam,” says Jo. “God, Mom scared me to death.”

“Hey,” says Sam, hugging her hard, having to hunch to do so. “Hey, it's okay, Ellen's fine.”

“Fuck everything,” Jo croaks, and sniffs hard and unladylike.

“Baby,” says Ellen, touching her arm, and Jo transfers her sudden bout of tears into her mother's shoulder.

Sam stands there, hovering dumbly, and for a beat words fail all of them. What is there to say? The white noise of denial and impotence continues to whine through Sam's head, blotting out logical thought. All he can feel is a full-body tightness, a vague nausea. Sorrow, anger, fear, they're nowhere to be found. And this directionless limbo is worse, far worse.

“I'm gonna go shake down a doctor,” Ellen declares, arm around Jo's shoulder. “See where they stand on the surgery.”

Dean rises immediately. “I'll go with,” he says, clearly ready to glower and intimidate his way through the entire hospital staff.

They're off. Jo goes, too, inextricable from her mother's arms. The hall is full of other people all moving with this... purpose, this sense of destination... nurses and orderlies, doctors, even the other random patients and families and friends, they're all going somewhere. Sam paces over towards the nearest bank of windows, under which is a line of chairs, but he can't bring himself to sit. He paces, chewing his cuticles and trying to remember not to bite the one he's already ruined, while Cas sits quietly, hands clasped tight.

Cas is wearing his tan overcoat even though it's far too warm for it. Sam finally takes real stock of the man: coat, shirt buttoned to the top and tucked into slacks. He even has a tie, to complete what Sam now recognizes as his suit of armor. Dull businesswear lends a kind of invisibility and invulnerability that Castiel only clings to when he's suffering through a shattering blow.

Cas' tie is tied badly, hanging backwards, the label showing. At length, Sam sits down next to him.

“I'm really. I'm so sorry,” Sam says, clipped and awkward. “You know I didn't mean... I don't think that...”

“It's Thursday,” Cas interrupts. Sam notices that he grips his right ring finger, makes a fist around that hand.

Sam's bewildered. “Yeah,” he says.

Cas says, “Sometimes it's hard to remember that I don't believe. That Thursday is just a day, over which I have no more control than any other day.”

Sam furrows his brow. “Well, yeah, you're... you're only human.”

“I wasn't...” Cas hesitates, then looks over at Sam, cool and sharp. Sam tastes bitterness on his tongue and he isn't sure he wants to hear what's coming next, but he doesn't think he has the right to not listen. “Do you know how I grew up, Sam?” Cas says, gaze boring into Sam's, willing him to understand. 

Sam's mildly alarmed at his tone. He shakes his head slowly.

Cas talks fast, quiet, pressing. “It wasn't a church, it was a cult. Do you understand? My father was the second coming. He was God incarnated again in mortal form. He was here to herald and oversee the apocalypse. Judgment Day was upon all of humanity, and only those who were chosen would ascend. _Our_ flock. The rest of the world was doomed to damnation and they deserved it for being infidels.”

His tone is getting angrier, more bitter. Sam's getting more worried. “My father's children weren't _human,_ Sam. We were angels, literal angels, his warriors, his weapons in the coming war, and we had _power_ and we had to have all the tools and knowledge to fight the demons that would walk the earth in the end times. Those demons would wear human faces but be not human, that was what they taught us. They would be able to die mortal deaths because walking the earth made them vulnerable. It was _opportunity._ That's what we were taught. The apocalypse would be a golden window to cleanse the world of evil, but only if we raised our army in time.”

Cas's hands are shaking hard by now, and his voice is losing control. He wavers on. “We trained in every kind of weapon, we lived like – we – we were soldiers. We lived in a compound, dressed in uniform. You know my eldest brother, he was named Michael. He had no reason to ever disbelieve the truth he was weaned on, that he was literally the archangel of war and justice, the Sword of the morning, a shining beacon of holiness in a dying world. _The world was ending._ Do you understand what it's like to – to be a child who thinks that there is _nothing,_ the whole world is four walls and one word, that there is not going to be a future, everything is damned, everyone is damned... what it's like to not be aware that a world even exists beyond one that, from outside, seems _so utterly insane?_ It was all I knew, Sam. I was the angel of Thursday and solitude. I dreamed about growing wings. _I did not believe I was a human being.”_

He finally breaks eye contact with Sam, looks away. His voice has gone hoarse. He scrubs the heel of one hand over his eyes so the tears don't have a chance to fall. He clasps the same hand over his mouth as if that'll keep him from speaking.

Sam takes a deep, shaky breath, lets it back out. “Cas...” he says quietly.

Cas lets his hand fall. “That was my family,” he says, finally. “My _family.”_ He snorts derisively, then sniffs hard. “Do you know, the day I stopped believing in God was the day I nearly beat a nine-year-old boy to death in the sparring ring. He was my littlest cousin. Samandriel. I was two years older. I took first blood and stopped because I'd won, but Uriel, our instructor, he told me to go on. I didn't dare disobey orders. I found out later Samandriel's mother Naomi had requested that he be... toughened up, I suppose, given special attention. Because she thought Samandriel was too emotional, compassionate. I think she worried he was gay.”

Sam sucks in a breath. “Was he?”

“I don't fucking know, Sam, he was _nine,”_ Cas snaps. “He liked to draw and he followed me around like he hero-worshipped -” He breaks off, coughs out an involuntary sob, pressed his hand over his mouth again.

Sam is floored, bewildered, at a loss of how to react.

“I never saw him again,” Cas chokes out. “And then the whole world I knew was just this tiny, impenetrable bubble with a... with an atmosphere inimical to human life. And Amelia made the first crack, let in the air so I could breathe. I never _fought_ them, I just... grew away, left when I could finally stomach it. Why didn't I fight them? They deserve –” He shakes his head, bites the base of his thumb.

He looks away down the hall, shoulders hunched in on himself; Sam stares at his back, tries to tear his eyes away but can't. He's frozen, processing. His emotions are a tumbledown ruin. Underneath the fear and panic, though, underneath the searing heat of guilt and the sour tang of pity, there's something else: a thread of understanding. Because while Cas clearly thinks his story is unrelatable, the truth is, Sam can relate. He thinks of Dad, who never left the military behind, who saw demons living inside ordinary people, whose response to childish fears of monsters in the closet was to give Sam a .45 and teach him how to shoot. Sam knew how to skin and gut a deer before he started learning cursive in second grade. Sam knew all the names of the demons in the Lesser Key of Solomon before he starting learning all the names of the presidents.

Yeah. He can relate.

“Does Dean know all this?” Sam asks, finally. It's the only constructive thing he can think to say.

Cas turns his head again, flashes Sam a glance from the corner of his eye. His features have been schooled back into stony impassivity. “Yes. Some,” he says. “Enough.”

Sam doesn't say anything for a long time. Cas stays doubled over, puts his hand over his eyes, takes deep, timed breaths. Sam looks away from him, out the window over the darkened streets, and thinks about Bobby: that's why they're here, that's where his thoughts should be. Sitting here in this hard plastic chair in a hospital hallways has nothing to do with what Sam said, or what Cas remembers. They're here because of family.

Sam remembers with a overpowering wash of guilt how he'd stood in a pet store months ago and told his brother that Castiel Novak _was_ family.

And he is. He is. John Winchester may have been Sam and Dean's father, but Bobby Singer is their dad. They don't need to be adopted by law or change their names to know that. Blood is blood, but love is a force that obliterates accidents of genetics. And Castiel's family isn't his father and Michael and Naomi and the rest: it's Amelia with her knowing little smile, it's Claire with windswept hair escaping her swinging braid, it's Dean with that look in his eyes, that hurricane force that would level continents for the sake of love.

And it's Sam, too. For the first time, it truly hits Sam in the pit of his stomach that Cas is more than just his friend, more than an extension of Dean. Cas is his brother.

Sam chews the inside of his cheek, then breaks the uncomfortable silence with a question: “Why did you keep the name?”

Cas blinks, startled. He looks at Sam, searching and wary.

“The angel name,” says Sam, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “You could've changed it.”  
Cas looks down again. After a moment's thought, he says, “My mother named me. I was the youngest. After Michael and Gabriel, she had a daughter... women weren't allowed to be soldiers in the church, of course, only brides and mothers. Father had no interest in her. There was no warrior's name for her. So she was Anael, God's Joy, but in private, Mother called her Anna. A plain name, a human name. Then by the time I was born, Father had begun to lose all interest in interacting with people... he stayed in seclusion nearly all the time. Michael and Gabriel were already such a handful, so full of themselves. I was born on a Thursday and Mother just...”

Cas shrugs. He bites his lip. “I kept it because Castiel isn't an angel of judgment or righteousness or... any ideal. Just a day of the week. It was my mother's way of giving me a name as ordinary as Anna. Of telling me I could be something else.”

Sam nods. After a moment he asks, “What happened to Anna?”

Cas smiles ruefully at his shoes. “Anna was always so angry. She was a reject in an insular community where everyone else had a divine purpose. She wanted to fight but kept being told she wasn't allowed. We were friends... she was my only friend, really. We'd meet in the fields at night... I'd pass on the drills we'd done that day, tell her all the things I'd learned in the boys' classes. That ended when we were discovered. We were separated from then on. One morning I woke and was told she had left. She hadn't; she was in the hospital. She'd tried to prove herself in a fight with some of the older boys and was overpowered. I believe Uriel was behind making sure the fight was as uneven as possible.”

Cas breathes out long and slow, still fixated on the floor. “It was the only time social services managed to remove a child from the church,” he says. “It's incredibly difficult to do, legally speaking. I've since found out that our compound was staked out by various agencies, trying to prove illegal weapons stockpiling. No one could risk a shootout, no one could legally enter our grounds. The status quo remained.”

Sam closes his eyes. “But they got Anna?” he asks quietly.

Cas smiles. “They got Anna. Her wounds were consistent with abuse and she pointed fingers. She had a rough time in the foster system but she found a home eventually.” His smile fades. “She never made any effort to contact anyone, Mother included. She was _so_ angry, I understood, but... Mother was devastated. Her health was already poor, and she died not long after that.” Cas puts a fist over his mouth for a moment, then adds, “I only know as much as I do about where Anna is now because Gabe hired a private investigator to find her a few years ago. We haven't contacted her. If she wants to cut ties, that's fine.”

Sam lets out a long sigh. “Shit.” He leans back in his seat, wringing his hands. “Listen... I am so damn sorry...”

“Sam, it's okay, you don't...”

“No, it's not okay. You _are_ family. You're family to Dean and that means you're my brother and shit like what I said can't fly.”

“I don't think I let it,” Cas says with a rueful little smile.

Sam shakes his head, tips it back and closes his eyes. He lets a long minute pass in silence, while they both process and decompress.

At length, Sam collects the right words to name his guilt. Slowly, he says, “I was... damn it. I was watching a movie with Jess... and I ignored my phone the first couple times it went off. People are always trying to reach me for all kinds of stuff and I figured it could wait another hour. Then I got a text from Jo. The missed call was Ellen. And I've just been imagining her trying to reach out... and no one answering when she called. And her just... stuck here alone, not knowing, no one listening...”

He sits forward again, puts his head in his hands. He feels a light touch on his shoulder, but it vanishes again after a moment. There's nothing left to say.

\---

Sam sits in silence for what feels like an eternity. His various guilts have compounded into a kind of guilt black hole that does nothing but whisk away every attempt at thinking something positive.

He finds himself dwelling on Cas' story because the alternative is thinking about all the things he doesn't know about Bobby's condition. He can imagine a little Cas as a nerd and a loner, sure, but a fanatic and a fighter is harder to wrap his head around. He's seen Cas' unthinking reflexes before – catching falling cups, avoiding collisions without even looking – but he hadn't attributed that to any kind of training. He tries to see Cas fighting, fails miserably.

But he can imagine Cas' loneliness without any effort. And growing up in an insular little fantasy world where the world was always on the verge of ending. Feeling that god's-honest fear of an oblivion your father insisted was just around the bend. Telling you every day that you had to be ready for it, you had to rely on no one. _Except for Dean,_ Sam had always added to himself, seething with resentment every time Dad gave one of his self-reliance speeches. He'd always looked Dad in the eye, said yes sir and no sir, and then gone right to Dean and bitched about Dad being nuts. And now that he was older he realized that Dean's silence hadn't been agreement so much as it had been hurt. Anguish at being torn in half between the two people he loved most.

Another guilt for the black hole.

A familiar tread brings him back to the present. Dean stops right in front of him and Cas. Sam looks up.

Dean looks grim but not like he's about to start smiting the hospital, so that's a plus. He's looking at Cas, who tilts his head in acknowledgement but doesn't meet Dean's eyes.

"He's gonna be in surgery for at least another couple hours," Dean says. "Broken back for sure. They're trying to fix the nerve damage.”

"Shit," Sam mutters.

"There's a different waiting room the nurse showed us to, Ellen 'n Jo are there." Dean jerks his head to the side.

Cas stands first, moving close to Dean so their arms are almost touching. Sam follows with a little distance, watching his brother and burning with shame. If Dean ever implied to Jess that she wasn't family, Sam would deck him. To be honest he thinks Dean deserves to know what he said so he can have a free shot, but Sam doesn't think Cas wants it shared. Sam watches the checked tile pass under his feet and nearly bumps into the doorframe when they arrive at the waiting room.

It's just an alcove in the larger hallway, really, but there's a table with a couple of magazines and a set of armless plastic chairs in a line in case anyone might want to lie across them for a nap. The nurse points out a cluster of vending machines down the hall and a little space like a broom closet with a water dispenser, a grody-looking coffeemaker, and a doorless cabinet full of styrofoam cups and toothpicks.

Ellen's sitting in one of the chairs, hands clenched together, staring at the far wall. Jo's up and pacing around.

Dean turns his upper body slightly into Cas' personal space, leaning close to speak quietly. “It's going to be a while, babe,” Dean murmurs. “If you want to go home...”

Sam doesn't miss the way Castiel's shoulders tense, and Dean means well but he doesn't know what conversation Sam and Cas just had.

“Do you want me to go?” Cas asks quietly, tone a little too sharp.

Sam interrupts before Dean can respond, although his mouth is already opening. “Cas,” Sam says.

Cas and Dean both turn to look at him.

“There's a 24-hour on the corner,” Sam says. “It's gotta have better coffee than here. Come help me carry.”

“Sam,” Dean tries, but Sam gives him a glare that he hopes is a clear 'shut up.'

Cas clearly knows what Sam's doing, and he gives Sam a cool look, but he says, “All right.”

Sam clears his throat and it comes out too loud. “Ellen,” he says. “Do you want anything?”

“No,” she says curtly.

“Yes,” Jo says, almost simultaneously. “Mom, you should eat something.”

“No,” Ellen repeats.

Jo clenches her fists, then steps forward. “I'll come too,” she says.

Sam nods. Jo picks up her things. She and Cas head out into the hall, and with one glance back over his shoulder at Dean and Ellen sitting across from each other in stony silence, Sam follows them.

\---

Two hours later, the low magazine table now littered with empty coffee cups and barely-touched packs of crackers and jerky, Ellen takes a deep, steeling breath that sounds too loud in the quiet. No one's spoken for at least an hour. Dean's eyes are closed, elbow on an armrest and chin on his fist, and he might be asleep if it weren't for his twitching leg. Cas is gazing out into the hallway, at all the milling humanity. Hospitals never rest.

All eyes turn to Ellen when she sits up straight and shakes her hands out. She blows out her deep breath through pursed lips.

“All right,” she says to herself, as if she's made a decision. “All right. It can't wait.” She looks right at Dean, clenches her hands together. “Boy, we need to talk.”

Dean's knee stops bouncing. “What?” he asks apprehensively.

“You're fired,” Ellen says.

Dean's mouth falls open. “What?”

Ellen shakes her head sharply. “This was supposed to be a whole thing,” she says, “I was gonna get everybody into the bar for drinks and – but I reckon we can't wait for that now. Dean, Bobby and I been talking for a few weeks now, and he, uh.” She scrunches her face up angrily, stares at the floor tiles. “He wants you at the shop more. He wants you undivided. We both want you to have more time to spend at home. So... I'm lettin' you go from the Roadhouse.”

Dean sits forward slowly, dazed. “What?” He's a broken record. “I – I mean, I don't mind, I like both the, I need the -” No sentence will quite reach an ending.

“Bobby wants to make you a partner,” Ellen says, voice thick. “He wants you to inherit the yard. His land, too, he wants your name on the paperwork.” She swipes a hand angrily over her eyes, pinches the bridge of her nose.

Dean mouths in silence for a moment. Then he puts a hand over his mouth, leans elbows on knees. “He can't,” he says weakly. “Why?”

“You know why,” she says fiercely. “If you act like you don't know why I'll come over there and kick the tar out of you.”

Dean moves the hand from his mouth to his forehead. Cas, next to him, finally moves. He leans over to put a hand on Dean's back, but says nothing.

Sam shifts in his seat; his butt is falling asleep. “Dean, this is great,” he says.

Dean shakes his head, says nothing, doesn't look up.

It hurts. Sam wishes Dean would feel the pride he ought to feel – the validation and self-worth, the trust and respect Bobby puts in him, the love at feeling so needed and so valued. Dean is Bobby's _son._ But even in the best of circumstances, Dean would still ask 'why?', and they all know it. And in _these_ circumstances... it's clear why Ellen couldn't wait. Because Bobby... if he gets back to work at all, he'll need Dean's constant help. He won't have any choice.

“The pay'll make up for what you lose from the hours at the bar,” Ellen says. “I've got a bartender lined up to interview. And Bobby told me he's thinkin' of branching into more restoration. Goin' to shows, networking. He wants to hire some muscle for the day-to-day fixing and get you specializing. More budget for parts, more trips to –”

“Stop,” Dean says roughly. He drops his hand from his eyes and Sam can see that it's shaking. “Stop. I don't.” He sucks in a deep breath, lets it out, then shrugs out from under Cas' hand and stands up. “I can't...” He looks lost, angry, close to boiling over, hands curling into fists.

He shakes his head jerkily, then walks off into the hallway and out of sight around a corner.

After a moment of silence, Ellen glances at Sam. She looks hurt, almost guilty, but Sam gets why she had to go ahead and drop the bomb.

“He'll come around,” Sam says quietly.

Cas gets up, walks out into the hall in the same direction Dean went.

During all of this, Jo has barely moved. Now she leans into her mother's shoulder. “He'll be okay, Mom,” she says, voice so small, and it doesn't really matter which “he” she means.

Ellen wraps her arm around Jo and touches the butterfly bandage on her cheek. “Yeah, baby,” she whispers. “I know he will.”

\---

From the moment Bobby went under the knife until the moment he's declared stable, the surgery takes six hours. When a doctor comes around to tell them it's over, Sam immediately texts Dean and Cas to come back, and they appear almost immediately – they must not have been far away. They stick close to each other, hands or arms touching. Sam crosses his arms to brace for the news.

“It could have been much worse,” are the first words out of the doctor's mouth.

 _Much worse is code for dead,_ Sam thinks, but that's uncharitable. The surgeons rescued most of Bobby's spine, reconstructed his mangled leg. They cleared out the glass and asphalt, repaired his torn muscles. They stopped bleeding in his skull that might have pressed on his brain before it could do any damage. But there was some nerve damage, the doctor says, that was beyond them. And it means Bobby won't walk again. He'll heal, he'll recover, he'll have full faculties, but he won't walk.

Dean punches the wall; Cas lets him do it once, but when he draws his fist back again, Cas takes his arm and says, “Enough,” and then Dean's crying into the shoulder of the tan coat and Sam, Ellen, and Jo all look away.

“When can we see him,” Ellen says tonelessly, her face void of emotion or color.

“He'll be unconscious for another few hours but we're moving him to a room now,” says the doctor. “He can have visitors, no more than two at a time, please. Techs and nurses need to be able to move around. He'll be in inpatient recovery for at least three weeks...”

Ellen nods, Jo blanches, and Sam finds himself tuning out. He doesn't mean to, and in fact he struggles to keep listening, but all he can see is the doctor's mouth moving. He drags his eyes elsewhere and they settle on the way Cas' hand is resting on the back of Dean's head. He drags them away again, to a random spot on the wall, next to a dull framed print of a beach.

He suddenly wants Jess. He desperately, achingly wants to be out of this building, to be talking to someone else about anything else; he wants someone to cry to, to freak out to, who'll tell him not to punch walls. He squeezes his eyes shut and all he can see is Jessica's smile. He puts a hand over his mouth. He needs to go home, he needs to go home... she was there when he got the call, she's worried too, but she'll be asleep now and he shouldn't wake her but _he needs to go home_ and right now, home is her.

He walks a little way apart from the others, takes out his phone. Ellen's still listening attentively to the doctor, something about long-term care now. Sam shakily types out a text to Jess: _can I come back to yours?_ She has classes in the morning and he shouldn't wake her up, he feels guilty, but it isn't enough to stop him. Pain and need are a greedy little monster squirming in his guts. Hurt makes him selfish.

But she sends back immediately: _Of course, how bad is it?,_ and he knows she wasn't asleep anyway.

“I'll stay,” Dean's saying.

“Don't be absurd, boy,” Ellen tries, but Dean interrupts her.

“Don't you dare,” he says, “try to make me forget you were just in a wreck, too. Go to bed, get some damn sleep and eat something real. Jo?”

“On it,” Jo says grimly, clutching Ellen's arm. Ellen looks pissed, but too tired to really argue. The red scrapes on her face stand out sharply against her anemic, sleepless paleness.

“I'll be here when he wakes up,” Dean says. “Or someone will. Someone'll always be here. Okay? I'm just taking first shift.”

“I can stay with you,” Cas says quietly.

Dean puts a hand on his cheek and looks at him in that way that makes Sam's aching desperation to see Jess flare up again. “You need sleep,” he says quietly.

“So do you,” Cas retorts, glaring him down.

“I'll sleep,” Dean says.

Cas chews on his bottom lip for a second, then says, “It's almost dawn. I'll be cancelling my classes anyway. I'll go home and get you some clothes.”

“Go home,” Dean says, _“sleep,_ then bring me some clothes. And breakfast. Bacon. A fuckton of bacon.” He looks at Cas searchingly. “Deal?”

Cas finally cracks a ghost of a smile. He nods, leaning briefly against Dean's forehead.

Sam coughs faintly. “Cas, can I get a ride back...”

“Yes,” Cas says, lifting his head and letting Dean go. He clears his throat. “Yes, we should go on.” He looks at Ellen and Jo. “Do you need -”

Jo shakes her head. “I'll drive Mom home.”

Sam gives a jerky nod, then turns to Dean. He stares at his brother for a second. He isn't sure who moves first, but – the hug is rib-cracking tight, enveloping and warm. Dean clutches his back in that way he does, tight fists gathering fabric, a hand just below the back of Sam's neck. Sam feels the pinch in his throat, the burning high in his sinuses, but he holds back tears by sheer force of will.

Dean thumps him one last time on the back and lets go. “Okay,” he says, voice thick. “Go.” He waves them off, turning quickly to hide a quick scrub over his eyes with the back of one hand. He strides off towards a nurses' station to ask directions.

Jo leads Ellen away in silence. Cas stares after Dean's retreating back for a moment, before turning to leave with Sam. They don't look each other in the eye.

\---

Bobby doesn't wake while Dean is there. He doesn't wake when Cas returns a mere four hours after leaving, bearing diner takeout and a bag with a toothbrush and a spare shirt. He doesn't wake when Sam joins them in the early afternoon, bleary-eyed, having barely slept.

When Sam pushes open the door, Cas and Dean are in the middle of a heated whisper-fight. “You can't be here every second,” Cas is saying, glaring at Dean, who's slumped in the only chair in the room with a padded seat, using the bottom rungs of the hospital bed for a footrest. “Even after he wakes, he'll be here for weeks.”

“Goddammit, I know,” Dean whispers back angrily. “I know it's gonna be a miserable-ass long haul and I need you to get that I'm gonna be in it every step of the way.”

“I don't expect any less, but you -”

“No buts, no -”

“You need to take care of yourself or you aren't going to be any help to -”

“This man is my _father,_ Cas, I don't expect you to -”

Sam clears his throat loudly, before Dean can finish a sentence he'll definitely regret. Dean and Cas both start and snap their heads to the door, looking vaguely guilty.

“Dean,” Sam says – quiet, but not bothering to whisper. “Go home.”

Dean flushes. “I've just been saying I'm _fine,”_ he begins.

Sam steps over the threshold and closes the door behind him with a quiet click. “Go home,” he repeats, too tired to be antagonistic. “Cas is right and you're being unfair. I love Bobby as much as you do, as much as Ellen does, as anybody. And if you don't take care of yourself, he'll be the first one to hand you your ass on a silver plate. You know that.”

Dean scoffs, but turns his face down. He rubs a hand over his brow. “Just until he wakes up,” Dean whispers.

“If he wakes up I'll call you and you'll be here in ten minutes,” Sam says.

Dean closes his eyes. His mouth twists. Cas puts a hand on his shoulder, sliding up to touch his neck.

“Go home,” Sam says. “Sleep.”

Dean finally drops his feet to the floor and stands. He stares down at Bobby, his eyes following the machine-even rising and falling of his chest. He blinks too quick, turns away, picks up his stuff, and heads for the door. He pauses by Sam, raises a hand uncertainly, and for a second Sam thinks he's going to go in for another bone-crushing hug, but instead he just thuds his fist lightly into Sam's arm. “Call,” he rasps.

Sam steps into the room to let Dean pass. Cas follows, subdued. Just outside the door, Cas turns back and gives Sam a heavy look. “Thank you,” Cas mouths.

Sam nods. He doesn't trust his voice.

“I'll make sure he rests,” Cas promises, and then he's gone, too.

Sam shuts the door with a quiet click. He turns to the bed.

“All right, old man,” he mutters. “Time to wake up.”

But Bobby keeps on breathing, the monitors keep on softly chiming, and all Sam can do is settle down in the chair Dean just vacated, lean back, and close his eyes.

\---

Bobby wakes on the third day. _Like Jesus,_ Sam thinks giddily, while Dean panics unnecessarily and jams the call button like he wants to break it. Sam wrests it out of his hands – dating Jessica has made him acutely aware of nurses' pet peeves – but he can't say a word about Dean's behavior while his own terror and relief are tying Gordian knots in his throat.

Bobby takes in his surroundings with bleary eyes while Dean hovers, mouth open but stuck for words, eyes bright. The first thing Bobby says is “Balls.” It wrenches a short, sharp sound out of Dean, half-sob, half-laughter, and Sam thinks, _only in this family._

Bobby's too weak for hugs, too tired for talk, and he calls them idjits for their tears, but his gratitude and his fear are plain on his face. Sam calls Ellen, who arrives, windblown, within fifteen minutes (meaning she ditched the Roadhouse and broke more than a few speed limits, but Sam won't comment). Sam is absurdly grateful that Bobby woke while Dean was sitting vigil, because all Dean's stony apprehension has finally crumbled. While they exchange some tired but well-earned shit talking, Sam steps out the door to make one more call.

He gets Castiel's voicemail because it's the middle of a school day. “Hey,” Sam says, and his voice cracks a tiny bit. He clears his throat, wishing he could start over. “Um, Bobby woke up. Dean's here and Ellen just got here so you don't need to come but I just wanted to let you know. I guess Dean'll be here tonight, too. Uh. I don't know, I guess call him when you're out of class.” Sam pauses, a jumble of unformed sentences struggling at the back of his throat. He needs to thank Cas, somehow, but – he can't figure out how. He flushes hot up the back of his neck, bites his tongue, and says, “Uh, talk to you later.”

He hangs up and stares at his phone for a minute, cursing himself. Then, figuring he'll see Cas soon enough anyway, he slips his phone in his pocket and heads back inside to make the most of the few minutes they'll have before Bobby goes back to sleep.

\---

Sam honestly doesn't mean to keep overhearing them.

This time he's in the little break room near the nurses' station, trying to rinse the coffeemaker's stained carafe in the meager stream from a water fountain so he can run a fresh pot. The water pressure is terrible and he can't get the residue of old caffiene tar out of the grooves in the bottom of the pot, and he's just starting to think about taking the carafe down the hall to the bathroom to use the sink when he hears Dean's voice almost right outside the door.

“-cking embarrassing, sure,” Dean's saying, tone light, edging towards a laugh, “but I think Sam's mental scarring can handle it.”

“You're not listening,” says Cas, sounding a lot more distressed. “I _can't_ get caught like that again. _I can't.”_

Dean's footsteps stop. Sam has frozen, coffeepot sloshing with brown, sludgey water. “Hey,” Dean says. “I'm sorry. I know it bothers you.”

“It's not...” Cas sighs and Sam can see the way he rubs the back of his neck in his mind's eye. “It isn't that I'm embarrassed, Dean,” he says, low. “It's – I can't take you out of the world like that. The world needs you in it.”

After a moment, Dean says, “What?”

“It's selfish,” Cas says, strained. _“I'm_ selfish. I – your family needed you and I kept you from them. I can't keep you for myself like that, I can't...”

“Hey,” says Dean, sounding alarmed, and Sam can hear the rustling of fabric. “No one can predict getting a call like that. There was no way to know this was gonna happen.”

“I turned your phone off,” Cas says, and it sounds muffled.

“Uh, _yeah,”_ Dean mutters. “And yours, too. Because you're not the kind of douche who'd be like 'hang on, lemme take this call' in the middle of getting it on.”

Cas snorts faintly.

“And I don't get where the hell you're pulling this 'selfish' crap from. You didn't keep me from anybody. We got here in no time flat.”

“You could've gotten yourself here if I hadn't...”

“Fuck that,” Dean says fiercely. _“Fuck_ that, Cas, you did everything right. I don't care if the world needs me or whatever, _I need you._ You don't get to call yourself selfish over stuff _I ask for._ This is just drop, this is brain bullshit, you know that.”

It's a moment before Cas says, “I know.” His voice is weak, still dejected.

Dean sighs. “We can take a break,” he says.

There's silence for a moment. Then Cas says, “From us?”

“No! Shit,” Dean says hurriedly. “Just from – you know.”

“Oh,” Cas says quietly. “Yes. That might be best.”

“But don't – I don't want you to think...” Dean huffs an aggravated sigh and Sam can easily imagine the look of stymied frustration on his face. “Can we talk about it again later?” he says at last. “I can't think.”

“I know.” There's a pause. “I'm sorry, Dean, you already have too much on your mind. I didn't mean to add to it.”

“Stop apologizing,” Dean says. Then, probably realizing how he'd barked it as an order, he adds a soft, “please.”

No more words exchanged after that, and Sam, thinking they've left, is just relaxing the set of his shoulders and starting to tip the sludgey water out of the carafe when he hears a faint, wet smacking. He makes a silent face of horror. He doesn't really want them to know that he just overheard their heart-to-heart, but like hell is he going to put up with them basically making out in a broom closet with him not three feet away.

He's drawing breath to tell them to cut it out when he hears footsteps getting closer. Blessed rescue. Someone interrupts them, a female voice squeaking startlement, followed by a flurry of overlapping voices apologizing and laughing awkwardly. Heavier footsteps move away, and then the door opens. A middle-aged woman looks startled to find the room already occupied.

Sam can't help that he's red as a beet, but he calmly rinses the carafe and holds it up. “Coffee?” he asks.

She snorts a laugh and nods, smiling, and he gets back to his task.

\---


	2. Your Red Eye Sees No Blame

_I hate to ask this, but is there any chance you could pick up Claire?_

Sam stares at his phone. Surely this is a misdial. Yeah, Cas probably meant to send this to Amelia.

 _Think you hit the wrong contact,_ Sam sends back.

 _No,_ pops up immediately, followed by _Sam._ No punctuation.

Sam's eyebrows go up. The phone starts to ring. Sam answers.

“Sam,” Cas says immediately, sounding harried. “I'm sorry, I know it's out of the blue. It's all right if you can't, I can try to -” He pauses, sighs harshly. “Or she can stay in homeroom until five, Ames can maybe cut -”

Sam is bewildered but amenable. “No, it's okay, dude, I can go. I just didn't think you meant me.”

“I know,” Cas says, sounding miserable.

“Is everything okay?” Sam asks hesitantly.

“I'm just,” Cas says, “so busy, and there's this – a student – it's nothing. It's, I just can't leave right now.”

“Hey, it's okay,” Sam says, alarmed at Cas' tone. “I'm only studying, I can go. What school?”

Cas gives him the details. Sam asks if it'll be okay, him, a total stranger, showing up to pick up Claire; won't the parents or teachers think he's abducting her? But Cas has already called her homeroom and told them to expect Sam.

“Should I take her to your place or Amelia's?” Sam asks, shoes on and keys in hand, already heading out the door, his books and notes still open and scattered over the coffee table. Kevin's asleep; Charlie's out.

“No one's home,” Cas frets.

Sam hesitates, then says, “I can bring her home with me?” He doesn't know what the hell he'll do with a nine-year-old girl for hours – she probably won't be interested in the old property dispute case files he's been reading – but Charlie will be home soon. Hopefully.

“Would you?” Cas sounds so relieved, Sam caves immediately. “It won't be for long, I swear.”

“It's okay,” Sam insists, already getting tired of saying the same thing. “Focus on whatever you're doing.”

“Thank you,” Cas says. He says it a few more times before Sam just hangs up on him.

Sam feels like he sticks out at the school like a boil – like at any moment, surely someone will stop him and demand to know what he's doing there. But he parks and waits awkwardly by the side of the soccer field, and parents merely smile and wave at him. After barely three minutes a whistle gets blown and the kids come scurrying off the pitch.

Sam isn't good with kids. When Claire walks over, holding her backpack by the straps, he can tell she looks subdued but he has no idea what to say to her.

“Hi,” he tries.

“Hey,” she says, and smiles. It isn't much of a smile, small and tight, but it's a start.

“Uh, you know that your dad...”

“Everyone's busy,” Claire says with a nod.

“Yeah,” Sam says. After a beat of awkward silence, he gestures. “I'm parked over here. Cas said you could hang out at my place until he gets free. Do you need to get anything?”

She shakes her head and follows him to the car. On the road, he asks if she's hungry, but she shakes her head again. When they get out at Sam's building, she shadows his every step. It's unsettling.

“Are you okay?” he asks as he opens the door and lets her in.

“Yeah,” she says noncommitally.

Stymied, he shuts the door behind them. He points out where the bathroom is, the kitchen, the cabinet with cups, the fact that there's water and juice and soda in the fridge that she's welcome to. He remembers that there's beer in the fridge and wonders if he should move that. Of course, there's also a bottle each of vodka and rum on the counter near the toaster. He decides not to worry about it.

Kevin's the only messy one of their roommate trio, and Sam and Charlie have successfully dammed the tide of his mess at his bedroom door. Their only stipulation is that if his disaster area attracts bugs, he has to pay the exterminator. So he's good about food trash, anything that might smell or spoil. Still, Claire's presence makes Sam acutely aware of every dirty dish sitting out, of the fact that he can spot at least three stray socks, of the handful of wine stains on the third-hand couch. On the one hand, it's like the Martha Stewart Living of a place owned by three un- or self-employed twenty-somethings, but on the other, having Claire around suddenly makes Sam feel like he's living in Animal House.

Claire takes a chair at the small dining room table, quietly removes her workbooks and notebooks from her backpack, and starts working on something involving numbers. Sam thinks about asking if she needs any help with her homework, but she's engrossed and doesn't seem to be struggling. He can't even remember what level of math he was doing at nine years old. Long division?

Stumped, Sam texts Cas that he's home safe with Claire, then texts Charlie to get back from her shopping trip stat. No reply from either. He returns to his studying.

It's almost five when Charlie gets back. Claire hasn't moved except to retrieve a can of Sprite from the fridge. Charlie bangs in laden with shopping, calling out, “Bow to your queen, bitches, I _am_ the coupon master.”

“Hey,” Sam chides, pointing so she'll notice the small child in the room.

“Oh! Who's this?”

“You don't check your phone? I thought it was implanted into your brain.”

“Died,” she says. “Drained the battery loading up coupons. You're Claire, right?”

Claire nods.

“Just visiting? Run away to join the circus? I mean, we _are_ the circus.”

“Charlie,” Sam tries.

She reaches out and squeezes his biceps with a serious look. “Hey,” she says, “could you take the gun show down to my car and bring up my supplies?”

“Your what?”

“You'll know 'em when you see 'em.”

Sam sighs and goes.

It takes twenty minutes to get back up the stairs and he has still not managed to figure out how she wedged this enormous frigging block of craft foam into her tiny-ass Beetle. It isn't heavy but it's so damn awkward he can barely get hold of it, and the wind's blowing just hard enough to snatch it away from him and have it halfway across the parking lot before he can blink. Twice.

“I hate you,” he yells as he finally manages to get it into the living room, held on his back like he's Jesus with the cross.

“Thanks, Sam!” she says. “Put it by my door?”

Sam groans and maneuvers it around. Once it's deposited, he looks over and notices that Charlie's at the table with Claire – and Claire's finally, finally smiling, a nice big real smile. A tension whoofs out of Sam's chest that he didn't even know was there. Charlie's doodling on a loose piece of paper and Claire's notebook page is full of scribbles now, not numbers.

“What's that for?” Claire asks shyly, looking at the block of foam.

“It's gonna be armor,” Charlie says, leaning in, “and it's gonna be cool as _heck._ You wanna see it?”

Claire nods excitedly and Charlie fetches her drawing pad with the concept sketches.

Relieved, Sam returns to his work. He barely notices the clock ticking away.

He's startled back into awareness by Charlie calling to him, “Hey, what's for dinner? The kid and I could eat a horse each.”

Claire giggles.

“Maybe just a miniature horse,” Charlie concedes.

Sam checks the time – almost half past six. Where the hell is Cas, and why hasn't Sam heard anything else from him? Maybe he should he call Amelia?

“Uh,” he says. “Yeah, we can... we can do dinner. I don't know... what do you like?” He looks at Claire and then pleadingly at Charlie.

“Wow,” says Charlie. “You are hopeless. Come on, kiddo, let's see what we've got in the kitchen.” Claire goes with her eagerly to explore the options.

They end up with macaroni and cheese with hot dogs chopped into it, and chocolate milk. “Look,” Charlie says to Sam's halfhearted protest, “emergency babysitting is all about breaking the rules and being the coolest pseudo-sibling ever. Vegetables are to be eaten under direct orders only.”

Sam retreats from the scene and just hopes that Cas will forgive him. He sends another text asking where Cas is, if he's okay. There's no point asking Dean – he's been at the garage all day dealing with administrative stuff Bobby hasn't been able to do, and he's spending the night at the hospital. Sam promises himself that if he doesn't hear back from Cas by eight, he'll call Amelia.

Charlie and Claire eat too much and laugh a lot and fill up page after page of Charlie's sketch pad with doodles of armor and dresses and cartoon characters. Eventually they migrate to the living room and Charlie fires up multiplayer Minecraft on her console and gives Claire a controller. Kevin slinks out into the kitchen, takes some leftovers, vanishes again. Sam gives up reading his homework and sprawls back on the couch to watch the girls building their dream castle-slash-dungeon-slash-stable.

It's just shy of eight when Sam's phone rings. He hadn't realized how on edge he was until he answers. His hands are sweaty.

Castiel says, “Sam, I am so sorry. I'm on my way over now.”

“It's cool,” Sam says, but he doesn't sound cool, even to himself.

“I'm sorry,” Cas repeats. “Ten minutes.”

Sam wipes his hands on his pants when he hangs up. “Your dad's almost here,” he says to Claire, trying to sound nonchalant. She barely reacts – maybe a little disappointed at the notion of leaving, because she's having fun. Charlie raises a questioning eyebrow at Sam, and he gives her a clueless shrug.

There's a knock at the door. Sam goes to get it.

Castiel looks like hell. Nothing physical, but – he looks wrung out, defeated, haunted. Sam is taken aback. “Hey,” he says, any annoyance he might have felt at Cas' strange behavior draining away in an instant. He steps to the side, waves Cas in. “Are you okay?” The answer is obviously no, but the nicety feels required.

Cas just shakes his head and looks into the living room for his daughter. His eyes are bright. He moves inside and Claire looks up.

“Dad?” she asks.

Tension visibly sags out of Cas' shoulders. Charlie takes the game controller from Claire and clears cables away so Cas can move in by the couch. He kneels by Claire and gathers her into a hug that lasts long enough to make Sam shift from foot to foot uncomfortably. Charlie looks up at him, eyes wide.

Cas finally lets go and tries to sniff discreetly, but everyone hears it. He moves up to sit next to Claire and rubs his eyes.

“What is it?” Claire asks, voice small.

“Oh,” Cas says. “Baby, it's okay. It's just been a bad day.” He leans his face into one hand. After a moment he says, “Do you remember Lily? She babysat you a lot when you were about five?”

“Yeah,” Claire says, lighting up at the name. Obviously a friend.

Cas glances watery-eyed up at Sam and then back away again. “One of my students,” he says, not quite looking at anyone. “She got started in anthropology with me and went into forensics. She's been in Tennessee getting her master's.” He rubs his mouth. “She moved back here a few months ago. I knew that, but we didn't meet up for coffee or anything. I told her that we should, that I'd find time for it.” He reaches out and brushes Claire's hair behind her ear. “She's in the hospital. That's where I've been.”

“Did she get hurt?” Claire asks, eyes wide.

“Sort of,” says Cas. “Yes. Remember when I explained depression?”

Claire nods.

“Lily was very depressed,” Cas says matter-of-factly. “The girl she loved passed away last year and she hadn't been talking to any friends for a while. She was tired of feeling bad, so she took a lot of medicine. A lot more than she was supposed to.”

Claire looks fearful but not too startled. “Kill herself,” she murmurs. It breaks Sam's heart to realize that she knows exactly what Cas is talking about.

“Yeah.” Cas takes a steadying breath. “Yes, she tried. But then she woke up a little and decided she'd changed her mind. She was really scared and not thinking straight, so she called me. If there's a bad emergency like that, you know what to call, right?”

“911,” Claire says obediently.

Cas nods. “I called 911 for her, since she couldn't,” he says. “And then I went to find her and I went with her to the hospital.”

“Is she gonna be okay?” Claire asks. “Like Uncle Bobby?”

Sam's heart skips at the name.

Cas nods, finally giving a faint smile. “Yeah, baby, she'll be okay. They're taking really good care of her. She's at the same hospital as Uncle Bobby, but she's going to be in the ICU for a while. The pills made her very sick. She woke up enough to talk for a while, though, that's why I took so long getting here. I'm sorry ...”

“It's okay, Dad,” Claire says. “I did my homework and had dinner. Don't worry.”

Cas' face screws up before he can stop it, and he hauls Claire into another hug, face pressed to her hair.  
Charlie discreetly levers herself to her feet and slips out around the side of the couch to nudge Sam towards the kitchen. They leave father and daughter to have their moment in privacy.

Charlie goes to fill the electric kettle, but her movements are jerky and she's pale as a sheet. “Lily was in my year,” she says softly. “We had a bunch of freshman classes together. We went on a date, once.”

“Shit,” Sam murmurs.

Charlie makes several mugs of chamomile-mint tea in silence. Sam helps her carry them out to the living room. Claire is subdued and melancholy again, with a deeper edge of distress. Charlie starts talking to her about Lily, about the fact that they knew each other, and Claire eventually perks into sharing stories. Cas retreats to the kitchen with the empty mugs as soon as he can, and Sam follows.

“I am really so sorry,” Cas says for the millionth time. “Dumping this on you -”

“Shut up,” says Sam, because he's too tired to be more delicate. “You spent the day saving a life, stop apologizing. Besides, Claire can stay here any time.”

Cas looks blankly at a wall for a moment, then says, “If I'd remembered about meeting her for coffee – if I'd made more of an effort to reach out -”

Sam kind of wants to slap sense back into him, but he's fully aware that that never works out the way it does in movies. He settles for saying, “Thinking in what-ifs like that is really self-centered, you know.”

Cas shuts his mouth and blinks. After a moment he says, “I know.”

“Okay then,” says Sam, and puts the mugs in the sink.

Cas rubs the back of his neck. “They sent out email invitations to their wedding,” he says, heavy. “Last year, Lily and Indira. They were going to have it in New York, I was going to fly out. Then Indira had a heart attack.” Cas takes a steadying breath. “Congenital defect. Nothing to stop it, no way to predict it. She was so careful about taking care of her heart, waiting for circumstance and insurance to pay for surgeries. It was going to have to be multiple surgeries, I remember that. It would have taken a long time to fix. Lily wanted nothing more than to help her fix it. She told me that in a letter. She wrote letters, real letters on stationery, for a while. She liked old-fashioned things.” He falls silent. Then he corrects himself: “She _likes_ old-fashioned things.”

“You saved her life,” Sam says, quiet but insistent.

“EMTs saved her life,” Cas says.

Sam shakes his head. Castiel is as bad as Dean at not recognizing his own value. “She called _you,”_ he says.

Cas just keeps giving the far wall this haggard, shell-shocked look of confusion.

“It's okay now, man,” Sam says, sighing. “It's over. Sleep on it.”

Cas shakes himself out of his stupor and rubs a hand over his face. “You're right. I need to get home.”

“And hey, if you ever need a kidsitter again -” Sam pauses. “Actually, I'm complete shit, but Charlie's amazing.”

Cas laughs softly. “Thank you.”

Sam goes in for the hug before he thinks about it. It comes as naturally as hugging Dean, a quick hard embrace, and as always Sam's mouth is around the top of Cas' ear, because Sam's never hugged someone his own height in his adult life. Cas tenses for a second, then hugs back, stiff as a mannequin. Sam flushes pink with embarrasment at himself but doesn't let go.

Cas pulls away, blinking hard and looking into the middle distance. “I'll get Claire's things. Good night, Sam.”

“Night,” Sam says quietly. Wishing, as always, that there was more to say.

\---

It's Amelia who takes Sam up on the standing offer of kidsitting – or rather, it's Sam who introduces Amelia to Charlie, and the two of them hit it off at once. Amelia nearly cries with happiness and relief at the chance to have a freely available sitter who can take care of Claire at a moment's notice. Charlie's doing freelance work from the apartment, writing gaming articles and selling her handmade costumes and props. Her lack of a set schedule is a godsend. Even though Claire effectively has four parents, they're all at their respective jobs more often than they're not.

A week after Claire's first impromptu visit, Amelia asks if Claire can spend the night. Charlie decides that this means no holds are barred. Charlie fetches Claire from school and takes her to an arcade and a movie before bringing her back to the apartment for nachos, cookies, and endless, raucous rounds of Splatoon. 

“You're the worst,” Sam tells her, giving up on his work and joining their squid team.

“A little de-stressing never hurt anybody,” says Charlie, tongue between her teeth. “Come on, handmaiden, hao_22894 is going _down.”_

“It's probably a bot,” Sam says despairingly, but they do manage to steamroll the other team five times in a row.

The next day is Saturday and they're making a mass outing to the hospital. Sam can't really disparage Charlie's methods of taking Claire's mind off things. It's working for him, too. So instead of forbidding it, he only insists that they have _one_ scoop of ice cream each for a late snack (even though a “scoop” by Charlie's standards is a pint by anyone else's).

None of the cheer of the night before survives into Saturday morning. Kevin emerges from his hermit den to join them – he says it's only because Lily was once the captain of the debate team he was a member of until last year, but Sam's sure he's just trying to pretend he doesn't have a heart of gold. Lily's only five years older than him, and she dealt with overachieving helicopter parents just like his, and he's as unnerved and upset about her suicide attempt as any of them.

Sam drives to a soundtrack of quiet public talk radio, since no one feels like singing. “Hey,” Kevin says, “can we stop somewhere? Get a card or something?”

“Hard to find a good card for this,” Charlie says.

“I know,” says Kevin. “But I want to look.”

They end up in an oversized drug store, the kind that's just shy of a Walmart. The cards go on for aisles and aisles, happy and stupid and noisy and fancy. Nothing that conveys the silent horror behind the 'get well,' the white elephant, the way nerve endings shiver in that bright, sour, coppery way at the anticipation of a future that didn't quite happen. A card can't contain the feeling of wretched, selfish gratitude that the card-giver will not have to attend a funeral. A card can't contain the regret of years of silence, or too-late sympathy for old, scabby griefs, or self-awareness of how small and useless the gesture of card-giving itself is. A card can't contain the shame of how, even now, Sam can only really feel Lily's pain on his own terms, through the lens of his own experience, and that's not any help to _her_ at all. That's not doing her any service or any justice.

So Sam doesn't even bother to look for a card. Kevin skims them, but his expression tells Sam that he's already given up.

Sam walks with Claire instead. At the end of an aisle they stop by a display stand of cut flower bouquets. Daisies artificially dyed magenta or green or blue, mixed in with peachy rose buds struggling to open and wilting baby's breath already missing half their tiny white blooms.

Claire slips her hand into Sam's, apparently without even noticing. She says, “Do they have fake flowers?”

“Let's look,” Sam says.

They find some in the small crafts section. They're cheap and plasticky, but their colors are true enough and they won't die on the table. Claire picks out a rainbow's worth, and a green plastic cup to set them in. Sam makes sure she doesn't get any lilies.

At the checkout, Charlie's using a borrowed pen to write furiously in a blank card she's already paid for – and she must have been writing for a while, because she's already written a small novel and has to keep turning the card to find new blank spaces. Kevin buys a bag of Chex Mix and some plastic zip bags.

“Someone always brought Chex Mix to the debate team meetings,” Kevin says as they head back out to the car. “Lily would eat _all_ the rye chips. After a while people just passed them to her. If she was late we'd take up a rye chip collection and leave it at her desk.”

Charlie laughs. Kevin tears open the bag and spends the drive to the hospital filling a snack bag with rye chips, sharing the rest of the mix around the car.

Sam's really learning to hate this hospital. Not because it's horrifying – Sam's never been scared of hospitals, doctors, dentists, needles or blood, any of that – but because it's becoming so familiar. It feels like he's always here, these days, if he's not sleeping or studying or in class, and he can't remember the last time he didn't smell faintly like the hospital's brands of floor cleaner and laundry soap. Bobby, in long-term recovery, isn't near those parts of the hospital that smell like illness and death. He's in the parts that reek of boredom, frustration, and resentment. Inpatient rooms. Dayrooms. Physical therapy. 

Sam doesn't even look at the signs anymore. He texts his arrival as he passes by the information desks – Castiel and Amelia are supposed to be meeting them upstairs, to make their visits and then take Claire.

Dean is supposed to be getting some sleep. Sam anticipates that he's upstairs anyway.

Claire holds Sam's hand in the elevator and Sam doesn't know how to feel about this ongoing development. He settles for giving her hand a light squeeze. He's always thought that Dean's natural ability with kids was something Sam would never have for himself – that it was born purely of Dean being an elder brother and a surrogate parent for his entire young life, and that, being the baby (and brat), Sam would simply never feel the same way. But Claire's presence has taught him a few rough lessons in the last week – that kids understand pain just fine, that they won't break under a few big words, that they don't speak a different language.

In fact, Sam's been unsettled and humbled at how much Claire reminds him of himself. He ought to be great with her – he ought to have plenty of common ground. It ought to be easier to remember what it was like to be nine, precocious and stubborn and not understanding how to fix his fracturing family, already feeling adult pain and thinking adult thoughts and resenting the kind of life that made that necessary.

Claire isn't too far down that road and Sam squeezes her hand a little bit again, realizing that he wants very much to help make sure she doesn't travel it any further.

When they step out of the elevator, Castiel, Amelia, and (surprise, surprise) Dean are all right there waiting. Amelia breaks into a relieved smile and holds out her arms for Claire, who drops Sam's hand and runs to her for a quick hug. “Hey, sweetheart,” Amelia says. “Did you have a good time?”

Claire gives an enthusiastic and rambling explanation of the previous day that boils down to 'yes.' Charlie is dragged in to help explain, and Kevin has to tolerate being introduced.

Sam sidles over to his brother. “When are you gonna sleep?” he says in mild accusation.

Cas raises an agreeing eyebrow and looks at Dean.

“Shut up, I'm going home after this,” Dean says, scowling faintly. “How's your allergy to rugrats doing?”

Sam snorts. “You know Charlie does everything.”

“Good for you to get some practice if you end up with one someday,” Dean says, but then Claire comes over to get a hug from her Dad and Dean joins in, turning away from Sam.

Which is well enough, because Sam's too startled to come up with a snappy reply. He short-circuits a little bit, rewiring his whole world view. Of the two of them he'd always pictured Dean being the one settling down, having kids, growing deep roots. Now he's committed – as far as Sam can tell, well and truly committed for life – to a relationship where his options for children are limited to surrogates and adoption, and considering Castiel's history they may not ever go for another child anyway. Of course, between raising Claire and inheriting the garage, Dean is _kind_ of living out what Sam always imagined... he's definitely not moving anytime soon. He has settled down.

Then Sam considers himself. Vague visions of the future always included himself in some kind of all-consuming job that he loved doing, making enough money to spoil Dean and Dean's kids and be a cool uncle. Sam knows he grew up poor. He knows Dean didn't eat so that Sam had plenty. He knows that when he was thirteen he hated his body so intensely he wanted to die, because it kept continuing to grow and grow and grow, and he was hungry _all the time,_ and he didn't want to ask for more than Dean already struggled to give him.

So yeah, his ambitions include money. He has no illusions about the fact that he's a little greedy. So is Dean. Sam will fight tooth and nail to make sure no family of his ever has to make awful compromises like choosing food over electricity, food over clothes. Dean doesn't think Sam remembers about the time when Sam was six and Dean was ten, when they went into a church during mass and sat very politely at the end of the last row, and when the collection plate got passed around Dean deftly and silently lifted the extremely generous twenty dollar bill someone had left, along with some crumpled ones and handful of quarters. Dean looked older than his age back then so he almost passed as a teen taking his kid brother to church. Old ladies praised him for being such a godly child as they left. Dean looked sick and miserable, one hand holding Sammy's, the other inside his pocket clutched around his stolen funds. They could afford the bus for a couple of days and dinner for a few nights after that, but Dean barely ate a thing.

Sam always imagined himself paying Dean back for everything. Funding Dean's happy apple-pie life with a wife and 2.5 kids and a dog, while Sam traveled the country and the world and made some kind of a difference, somehow, somewhere.

Well, the dog's out of the question. Wife's out of the question. Kids – pending. Apple pie, guaranteed.

And Sam, with all of his family and friends here in SoCal, at the ripe age of 23, is finding that he doesn't want to travel as much as he used to. Well, he still wants to travel, but more importantly, he wants to come home afterwards. When he was a little kid and they lived in motel rooms and the car, Sam didn't think he had a home. He wanted to go out and backpack, hitchhike – he considered traveling as an endless endeavor without a destination, just pinging from one place to the next. Now he finds himself thinking of travel in terms of vacation. Going somewhere for a fixed period of time, but coming back when he's done. And he realizes that he thinks that way because he has something to come back _to._

He thinks of Jessica and he wonders if she'll ever want kids. After law school and nursing school, after the degrees and the first jobs and maybe even the second jobs, if they're still together by then (and he simply can't picture a future in which they aren't), with enough savings for a house and a college fund and, yeah, a dog. He wonders. And for the first time in his life, he kind of also _wants_ , too.

Dean jabs him on the shoulder. “Hey, la-la land.”

Sam shakes himself free of terrifying, vertiginous thoughts of the future and plants his brain firmly in the present. “What?”

Dean nods at the bundle of flowers in the green plastic cup that Sam nearly forgot he was holding. “You going with to the ICU?”

“Oh,” Sam says. He didn't know Lily personally and doesn't really have a reason to go see her, but he figures he can't hurt. “Yeah, I'm going. You?”

Dean shakes his head. “I'm sure it's gonna be too crowded anyway. I'm heading home, I'm wiped out.”

“No shit,” Sam says dryly, and Dean punches his arm again.

“Drop in on Bobby before you leave,” Dean says.

“I'm offended that you think I wouldn't,” Sam grumbles.

Dean leans over to Cas and kisses his cheek. “I'm gone, babe,” he says. “Pizza or Chinese?”

“The one with vegetables.”

“Pizza can have vegetables,” Dean mutters, but he concedes to Cas' order of broccoli chicken and leaves with a shake of his head and a roll of his eyes.

“It's like having another child sometimes,” Cas says to Sam as they head en masse down the hall to the ICU. Sam laughs.

Space in Lily's room is limited, and her family is already there. Sam doesn't know anyone. An older woman is acting as a sort of gatekeeper to the room, shaking the hands of strangers and asking how they know Lily. It's vaguely uncomfortable, confrontational – as though the older woman, maybe a grandmother or a great-aunt, is trying to weed out which of Lily's acquaintances might be to blame for her hospitilization. Castiel, in particular, gets the third degree for being the person Lily called in a moment of life-or-death panic, instead of any of Lily's family.

Through the door Sam glimpses a thin and tired-looking young blonde woman lying in the bed, festooned with tubes, and he can't imagine that being at the center of this pressure cooker of family members is doing any good. But he has nothing to do with these people, and there isn't a reasonable way he can say anything. He notices passing nurses frowning at the room, and figures they all think the same.

Claire looks as uncomfortable as Sam feels. He taps her on the shoulder and kneels down. He holds out her cup of flowers.

“Hey,” Sam says. “Let's see if we can get in, yeah?”

Claire takes her cup of flowers and looks grateful for having a purpose to hang onto.

A hand on her shoulder, Sam guides Claire around the knot of adults and into the door. People tend to get out of Sam's way on pure instinct, because he's like a tree with legs, and now it comes in handy.

A young man inside the room dares to stand up from his chair and ask Sam, “School friend?” His tone is demanding. Sam gives him a cool, silent stare.

“David,” Lily says wearily, shutting him up. She looks like she hasn't slept in weeks, bruised eyes and lank hair, thinness showing all the way down to the fine bones lining the backs of her hands. But there's a flush in her cheeks and a look about her of someone who's just woken up. Her eyes are on Claire.

“Hi,” Claire says uncertainly.

“Claire?” Lily asks. Her voice is quiet, hoarse. “You're so grown up.”

It snaps Claire out of her discomfort. She leaves Sam and takes her flowers over. “I missed you,” Claire says.

Lily's face scrunches up; Claire reaches up for a hug; Sam looks at the floor and shuffles back out the door.

He wanders a little further away and hovers, unsure if he should wait or simply walk away to see Bobby. He's just decided to leave, has turned away and made it several yards down the hall, when footsteps catch up behind him and a hand touches his arm. He turns back.

“I can't thank you enough,” Cas says. “Last week, yesterday, all of this.”

Sam scratches the back of his neck. “No, it's fine, really.” He nods back down the hall. “Ever going to get in there?”

Cas scowls. “I doubt it. I wish telling those people exactly how toxic they are would make any difference. She's being released in three days and she'll be staying with a friend, not family.”

“That's good,” Sam says. “Uh... tell Claire I said bye, I guess.”

Cas holds up what Sam didn't notice before – a plastic stem of bluebells. Cas smiles wryly. “She said this is for, and I quote, 'Sam and Dean's dad.'”

Sam grins and takes the fake flower. “Tell her thanks.” He twirls the flower. “She's a really great kid, man. You're lucky to have her.”

“I know.” Cas ducks his head.

Before he can think about it, Sam blurts, “Do you ever think – you and Dean, kids -?”

“Ah,” Cas says, after a slow blink. “Biology is not in our favor.”

“Adopting,” Sam says hurriedly. “Or whatever.”

“Oh.” Cas blinks again, slow and bemused. “No. I hadn't thought about it. Why? Has he said something?”

“No! No.” Sam rubs his eyes. “No, sorry, that was just me having a brain fart. It's none of my business.”

Cas smirks faintly, and Sam has the terrible feeling that he's seen right through Sam and read every thought he's had for the last hour. “Is your biological clock ticking, Sam?” he asks.

“Ahah, okay, I'm gone,” Sam says, pretending his ears aren't turning pink.

“Wait until after you graduate,” Cas says sagely.

“Bye!” Sam hurries off down the hall.

“Start investing in diapers now!”

Sam furtively flips Cas off and makes it around a corner, towards the elevator bank. He's still red around the gills when he arrives at Bobby's room, where the old man is arguing under his breath with the TV.

“Sit your butt down, boy,” Bobby orders Sam, barely glancing over. “Making me tired just looking at you.”

Sam laughs and parks himself in the chair that's usually Dean's. “Been to physical therapy today?”

“The hell you think?” Bobby grouses. “Boot camp's nicer.” He stretches with a groan against his pile of hospital pillows, rotating his shoulders and rubbing his arms. “I thought I was decent fit, enough for the shop anyway, but that chair's gonna make my arms fall right off if it don't give me a heart attack first.”

“Oh come on, you know once you get out of here you'll spend all your time parked at the garage, 'supervising',” Sam laughs.

Bobby grunts. “Can't expect Dean to keep an eye on everything all the time,” he says. “Now hush, unless you know the answers to the 15th century art category.”

Sam settles back and they watch Jeopardy for a while, arguing about the answers, berating contestants for getting things wrong, mentally tallying their imaginary winnings. It's a mini-marathon that runs on for half the afternoon, and Sam loses track of time. After the last credits roll into the opening of some soap opera, Sam finally realizes he's got a load of postponed homework he needs to cram before the weekend's over. He starts trying to make his apologies to Bobby, but he's interrupted at once – “Boy, I'd _worry_ about you if you didn't have something better to do than yell at a TV with an ornery old man.”

“Oh, come on,” Sam protests, standing and getting his things. “You can't get rid of me that easily.”

Bobby rolls his eyes. “Tell your brother if he don't keep his ass at home this next week, I'll call hospital security on him.”

“You know what he's like about family,” Sam says quietly.

Bobby gives Sam a long, steady look. “He's got more family than just me.”

Sam smiles and ducks his head. “I know. I'll lock him up, don't worry.”

“But tell him to get that advertising call list done, too,” Bobby adds. “I'm a poor, broke-down, greivously injured old man who can't be expected to do all that heavy lifting.”

“Lifting the telephone?”

Bobby gives Sam a look of pure mischief. “What's the point of naming a partner and heir if I can't make him do all the jobs I hate?”

Sam laughs. Something prickles against his hand and he pulls the stem of bluebells out of his bag. “Oh,” he says, passing it over. “Almost forgot. From Claire.” He smirks. “To Grandpa Bobby.”

Bobby goes ruddy under his beard, taking the flower. “Get off it, boy, I know she calls me Uncle.”

Sam shrugs. “Well, and I quote, these are for 'Sam and Dean's dad.' I'm pretty sure with how geneology works, that officially makes you Granddaddy Singer.”

“Shush, you!” Bobby retorts, just flustered enough that he can't come up with anything better.

Sam laughs and heads for the door. “I'll see you later, Bobby.”

“Fine,” says Bobby. _“Son.”_

Sam goes red, too, and walks out with his head bowed, trying to hide his grin.

\---


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick Dean and Cas timestamp set a few months after Bobby's wreck, to balance the Sam-heavy previous chapter. One more hospital-event chapter yet to come.

“Give me an idea,” Cas yells into the silence.

It's not a comfortable silence; it's all stress and time crunch and the two of them sitting sequestered in their opposite sides of the apartment, hunched over work, sweating bullets. Dinner had been fast food because neither of them had the time to cook or the mental energy to do so much as boil a pack of ramen, and Cas' cheeseburger isn't sitting well. He has to get this damned course plan done _tonight,_ and it's a shit 101 class that had been dumped on him at the last minute, and it's fricking Intro to College Life. Every other humanities professor he knows has had to teach it at some point or other but he's managed to fly under the radar for almost ten years. And now it gets thrown at him with three days' notice to get a plan together? He's ready to tear his hair out. No, actually, he's ready to tear out the little remaining hair of the dean of the languages department.

So Cas is at his desk in the bedroom, head in his hands, staring at a document that currently has three sentences in it, and wishing death-by-meteor-impact on Dr. Roberts, who he _knows_ is the one who weaseled out of this gig and suggested Castiel instead.

Meanwhile, Dean is out in the living room, facing down a small mountain of faxes and spreadsheets and a contact list a mile long. Cas knows Dean was intensely affected by being made a partner at Bobby's place, that being as dear to Bobby as a son is the kind of emotional affirmation that can simultaneously ruin and rebuild a man like Dean... Cas knows he'd never, ever give up or step down or back away from any task the job throws at him, because he treasures that job and that business more than all the wealth under the earth.

But all that love and commitment doesn't stop Dean from bitching up a storm about every single aspect of management he finds remotely disagreeable. The winner of the Most Absolute Bullshit Job prize is having to contact – well, anyone. Other scrap dealers, insurance companies, car dealerships, repair shops, parts suppliers, the company that hires the long-haul drivers who bring loads of junkers into the yard, antiquers, advertising houses, legal advisors, tax associates. Dean has begun to frequently declare that he understands now why Bobby is the way he is.

So with the semester starting in four days and Bobby going in for another reconstructive spinal surgery the day after tomorrow, both Cas and Dean are utterly swamped. For the last week they've done nothing but kiss perfunctorily, sleep like logs (when they're not tossing and turning with anxiety dreams), forget to eat and then eat junk, and generally exist on the verge of a meltdown.

Just when Cas has stopped thinking Dean's going to respond, or that maybe Dean didn't hear him in the first place, Dean's voice drifts to the bedroom: “Frottage.”

Cas leans his face heavily into his hands. “An idea for this class, genius.”

“Tell 'em have a big ol' daisychain, welcome to college, bam, done.”

Cas muffles a laugh into his palms. “Never mind. I can't ask you anything.”

“How to eat a dick. I'll give a live demonstration.”

“Dean.”

“The history of condoms, then how to put one on. Again, live demonstration.”

Cas almost retorts, then considers. “Actually, that's not bad,” he says, typing a few words (“safe sex basics w/historical component”) and sitting up straighter in his chair.

“What, the live dem-”

“No,” Cas calls. “The history.”

“Ugh. You're no fun.”

“How goes our long national inventory nightmare?”

“Fuck Steve Whitehall. Fuck him right in the ass, and not in the nice way.”

“I see.”

“Fresno Scrap & Lumber can lick my shiny metal taint.”

“I don't think that's how that quote goes. Also, are you trying to tell me something?”

Dean lets out an explosive groan of frustration and stress from the other room, and Cas can envision him slumping back in his chair, yanking his hair in both hands. “That I'm stressed and horny as _fuck,_ is that what? I don't know what could have given you that idea.”

Cas rubs his hands over his face, pressing into his eyes until he sees spots. His head throbs gently; his skin feels too tight. “Can you afford to take a break?”

There's a long silence. At length, Cas hears a chair scrape back and footsteps. A moment later Dean's pulling Cas' desk chair out and draping himself over Cas like a blanket.

“No,” Dean groans, falling into a hungry, relentless kiss, and Cas matches his enthusiasm.

“I can't either,” Cas says, or tries to, but against Dean's lips it comes out something like “hhcannither”.

“Mmmfuh, fuck, shit.” Dean parts from his mouth to jerk Cas' t-shirt up and yanks at the drawstring of his pajama pants, getting enough wiggle room to shove his hand against Cas' crotch. Cas rolls up and sucks in an encouraging breath, watching the flush blooming high in Dean's cheeks, outlining his faint freckles.

“I can't take a break,” Cas says frantically, fighting with Dean's jeans (why is he still wearing jeans, it's late, this is so inconsiderate), “I really can't, I have to get this done.”

“Get some, uh,” Dean says into his cheek and jaw, “some creative juices flowing,” and he snickers at himself.

“You have to do inventory tomorrow,” Cas insists. “You have to be in at five in the morning. You should be asleep an hour ago.”

“It's Steve Whitehall's fault,” Dean says, “and move down, I can't get -”

“I'm gonna fall off the chair,” Cas complains, ass already nearly half off the seat.

“Well, move – ah, fuck it.” Dean staggers up, grabs Cas' wrists and hauls him up only to spin him around and deposit him on the bed. Cas feels like he should probably argue with this treatment but he's a lot more interested in the fact that Dean's finally shoving his jeans off and kicking them so hard they hit the closet door with a loud thump.

Dean falls over Cas, bouncing them both on the mattress, tugging at Cas' clothes, and then his hand is on both of them and he's gripping a little too tight but Cas can't even care, he's so into this right now. And is he into it because it's Dean and he loves Dean, or because it's such an explosive relief to not be looking at that _stupid_ lesson plan anymore? Probably both. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter as long as Dean's stroking them both off like his life depends on it, pressed together hard and slick and blood-hot, it doesn't matter why as long as Dean doesn't stop doing that one _thing_ that _one fuckohfuck_ with the thumb and the _oh_ shit one moretimeone _moretimeonemore_

Cas cries out his release against Dean's lips. Has he ever come so fast in his life? He almost wishes he had statistical evidence so he could see if he's broken some kind of record. Though that's probably not a record he should admit to breaking. Oh, who cares. There isn't much afterglow, not much of a comedown, but he sucks in deep breaths and caresses Dean's waist. Dean's eyes are closed, head bowed, and his hand is flying like his life depends on it, breathing hard, damp forehead nearly touching Cas' shoulder.

Cas gets his senses together enough to help Dean out. He rolls and pinches Dean's nipples, plucking lightly to get Dean to suck his breath in in that one particular way... ah, there it is. He keeps pinching and pulling one nipple, and wriggles under Dean for just the right angle to reach between Dean's legs and find... yeah...

The unexpected exploratory finger at his ass is enough for Dean to yell, buck, bite Cas' shoulder. He stripes Cas' belly, over a week's worth of stress and sexual frustration shaking through him in a few seconds' hard orgasm.

Dean relaxes over Cas, dropping down to his elbows and making a commendable effort not to crush Cas under his full weight. He slides off to the side a bit, breath rough, skin still over-warm to the touch.

After a minute, Cas says, “Did that help?”

“Nnng,” Dean says into Cas' neck.

“Me either.”

Dean gives an exaggerated whimper, muffled by skin.

Cas sighs. “All right. What would be the _absolute worst_ that could happen if you don't get this call list done tonight?”

Dean grunts. “Push inventory back a day. Investment in time and people doubled. Shop closed two days. Schedules fucked up. Dent in profit.”

“A step back from the worst, what's likely to happen?”

Dean groans in disgust. “There's only a few pages left, I could get up earlier... get it done by six maybe, get a later start at the shop, run late tomorrow night.” He sighs. “You?”

Cas makes a face. “I have to get this done. I mean I really, really have to get this done. I won't have a spare ten seconds tomorrow and I have to hand it in for approval and the dean's already breathing down my neck because it's past deadline.”

Dean sighs, pushes up a little higher on his elbows to see Cas' face. “I can help. I mean, make an actual effort to help.”

Cas leans up for a quick kiss. “You're going to sleep,” he says. “Right now. You can still get five hours. I don't have to be anywhere until eight.”

“Mnnh. I'm sorry.” Dean kisses back, shifts his weight so he can run a hand through Cas' hair. “Don't stay up all night.”

“I don't care if it's crap, as long as I have something,” Cas says.

“Liar.” Dean kisses his nose and pushes himself upright. “You put more work into those shitty 101 classes than anyone.”

Cas doesn't argue the point. He'll try to not care, but in the end he knows his inner perfectionist is going to win.  
As Dean goes off to the bathroom to brush his teeth, Cas lies there and considers himself. His hands are a mess, his stomach's sticky, his fresh-from-the-laundry shirt is all speckled. And he'd just showered not two hours ago, damn it.

He calls, “You know, before I met you, I did not spend nearly so much time covered in semen.”

Dean laughs all the way to bed.

\---

“Dean.”

Dean mumbles into his pillow.

“Dean, it's four thirty.”

Dean digs deep into the covers and crushes his head into the pillow.

Sighing, Cas yanks the blankets down, leans over him and hauls on his shoulder. Dean tenses in resistance and yelps with indignation. Cas leans his face into the top of Dean's shoulder to plant an apologetic kiss and say, “It's four thirty, you need to get up.”

“Nooo,” Dean moans into the pillow, cramming it tight over his face with his elbows.

“The coffee's running and there's croissant sandwiches and donuts and get up or you don't get any.”

Dean immediately flips onto his back with a huge whuff. He squints blearily up at Cas. “What?”

“It is half past four in the morning,” Cas says patiently, “and I didn't get any sleep, and I went to find food and the donut place was just starting up and they're fresh and I will eat them all.”

Dean struggles up onto his elbows. “'Sfourthirty,” he slurs, squinting across to the clock. “Why.”

Cas sighs and steps back. “Well, you're up. My work is done.” He turns and walks out of the bedroom, following the hiss that means the coffeemaker's done. 

\---

_How's inventory going?_

_bobby ill kill stevia whitehead before I get to_

_I'll take that as a negative, and ask what you actually meant when you get home._

_you?_

_I would like to stuff Dr Leon Roberts' hideous tie down his throat._

_aw bab cmon I the I was special now u got tie kink fir evening muffle u see_

_… 'for every motherfucker I see?'_

_ur getting food at autocorrect bingo_

_Thank you_

_jakes yellow to stop sexting and work babe ill see u late_

_All right. I love you_

_< 3_

\---

Cas rouses from his half-doze at the sound of the door clicking closed. He gives the dim room and the flickering television a druggy blink, slow and sticky, trying to wake up. He's too tired.

Dean's footsteps are a combination of trying to be quiet, and being too tired to lift his feet properly. It translates to a slow shuffle with the odd thump, and it makes Cas imagine Dean as a creaky old man lurching around with a tennis-ball-muffled cane. His mouth twists into a grin and he can't help a quiet laugh, even though the very skin of his face is sore and slack with exhaustion.

“Hey,” Dean mutters into the dimness. “You laughin' at me?”

Cas chuckles again, closes his eyes and shakes his head.

Steps old-man-shuffle their way over to him. “Are _you,”_ Dean says, adopting an awful fake accent, “laughin' at _me?”_

Cas opens his eyes and looks up at Dean. He looks worn beyond belief, bruise-eyed and slumped, but even so, there's a twinkle in his eyes. He lights up just at the sight of Castiel, and Cas knows it's mutual.

Dean shrugs out of his coat, drops his things on the end of the couch, and says, “You didn't need to wait up for me. Or did I wake you up?” His voice is soft, all sleepiness and affection, the vocal equivalent of a warm blanket.

Castiel thinks, _This man is the love of my life._ He says, “Stevia Whitehead?”

Dean giggles and bends over the back of the couch, supporting himself while he toes off his boots. “I was just mashing the screen by the end. Should have seen some of the texts I sent Bobby before he just started calling every five minutes, worried I was drunk on the job.”

Cas shakes his head, laughing quietly. He finally creaks upright, groaning at the movement, and finds the remote to turn off the TV. The darkness is sudden, but there's still enough light in the hallway to navigate to the bedroom. “Coming?” Cas asks, standing and stretching.

“Be right there. Let me brush my teeth.”

“I love you.”

It sits in the darkness for a moment, non-sequiter, unaddressed. Dean shuffles around the edge of the couch, finds Cas' hand in the dark.

With utmost reverence and gravity, Dean intones, “You are an incredible sap.”

Cas squeezes Dean's fingers with one hand, and punches his arm lightly with the other. “Take a shower, you greasemonkey,” he says.

“Oh come on,” Dean breathes out on a laugh, “I showered at the shop.”

“You still smell like motor oil.”

“Oh yeah? I thought you liked that. Smells all manly.”

“I like,” Cas says, sidling closer into Dean's space, “when you smell like hot metal. And leather. And my shampoo.”

Dean nuzzles his cheek with his nose. “When do I smell like that?” he murmurs.

“When I'm done with you,” Cas whispers.

“Fuck.” Dean breathes deep by Cas' ear, then kisses the side of his neck. “I'd say let's take this to the bedroom, but I'm pretty sure the second I go horizontal I'm gonna be dead for at least twelve hours.”

Cas sighs. “Same,” he admits.

“Rain check,” says Dean.

“Don't wait too long.”

“Oh,” says Dean, “I'm thinkin' I'll cash it in in... about twelve hours.”

Cas laughs into Dean's shoulder. “Fair enough. I can't promise insomnia donuts tomorrow morning, though.”

“My arteries thank you,” says Dean, “even though my mouth is disappointed.”

“I'll have to find something else to keep your mouth occupied.”

Dean snorts. “Sam's right, I have been a bad influence.” He slides his hands around Cas' lower back and bumps his nose into Cas' cheek. Cas finds the right angle and kisses Dean long and lingering.

“No,” Cas says at last, “I think you've been a good influence.”

“I love you,” Dean whispers.

“Sap,” Cas says, but punctuates it with another kiss.

\---


	4. We Remain the Same

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flu-related trigger warnings: emetophobia (nothing graphic), sickness, hospitals, IV needles.

_November_

 

After his third knock goes unanswered, Sam shifts the heavy tupperware container he's carrying into the crook of his arm and goes fishing through his keys for one he has almost never used: the key to Dean and Castiel's apartment.

When Cas had given it to him, he'd joked that he might as well just have a hundred copies made and throw them out to his classes. It's true that Cas's apartment has become far more of a social hub than he'd probably ever expected it to – Sam visits often, Amelia and Claire both have keys of their own, and although Sam has never seen him here he knows that Cas' brother Gabriel has an all-access pass, too. Sam had asked if Cas ever worried about privacy, and Cas had just shrugged. “As long as no one lets the cats get out,” he'd said.

So Sam minds the bottom of the door as he swings it open. Sure enough, Tribble is underfoot the second he sets foot over the threshold. She isn't interested in making a break for the outdoors, though, just in tangling around Sam's ankles and generally trying to kill him.

“Damn it,” he mutters at her while he dances around, trying to get the door closed again without catching her tail or dropping his armful of stuff. His laptop bag bangs into his hip and threatens to overbalance him. At last, he makes it around the cat obstacle course, flips the door latch, and beelines for the kitchen.

“Hey, Cas,” he calls out of habit, not bothering to look around for the older man. He's probably buried in a book or typing furiously. Sam's spent enough time hanging out with Dean here to know that when Cas gets in a zone he can completely fail to hear even the most explosive of noises – like Dean screaming at a football game, or Sam dropping pans in the kitchen, or the cats tearing through the apartment like possessed hellions. He'll just stay hunched over his computer, pounding out wordcount.

Sam deposits his giant tub of soup on the kitchen counter and lays his laptop bag down next to it with a sigh. It's been a long, grueling week in all his classes, but he's just handed in a ream of major papers and with winter break on the horizon it's looking like he might actually get a chance to breathe sometime soon. And it's finally, finally Friday. Sam's looking forward to sleeping, sleeping, maybe some TV, and more sleeping.

Of course, he plans to be doing his sleeping on Castiel's sofa, which is a whole complication unto itself. It's a 'doesn't rain but it pours' kind of weekend: Sam has no housemates, with Kevin gone to some kind of youth leadership conference and Charlie gone to War (well... the regional SCA war games, that is, in which she's the general of an elf army or something like that), and on top of that he has no _home,_ because it's being fumigated. They'd figured that with two out of three occupants gone, it was a good enough time to get their recent roach outbreak dealt with. Broke college students they might be, but Sam draws the line at baby roaches living behind the microwave. Besides, he was tired of hearing Kevin shriek like a banshee at three in the morning every time he got up to piss and encountered a roach in the bathroom.

Sam had said sure, fine, whatever, he could stay with his girlfriend. Except he couldn't, in the end, stay with Jessica: she got assigned rotation at a hospital two hours away and didn't want to commute, so she's rooming with a friend. And she's there for two weeks.

Sam already knew Dean was going to be gone this weekend to a car show in Redding – it had been planned for months – so he'd been at the point of throwing himself on Ellen's mercy and asking to stay in the back room of the Roadhouse, when Castiel had come to the rescue. Or, rather, Cas had told Sam in that mild, vaguely perplexed way of his that he was offended that Sam felt like he was only welcome in Cas' home if Dean was also there. It had been just guilt-trippy but also just sincere enough to make Sam cave instantly.

So here he is, bearing an enormous quantity of homemade soup that had been foisted on him by the Harvelle women, and preparing to have a nice, relaxing weekend of... sleeping on his ex-professor's, brother's boyfriend's couch, being smothered by cats and trying not to think about what other activities said couch might have been subjected to in its time in this apartment. (Actually, Cas had offered to clear Claire's room up a bit since she's not there, even went so far as to ask Claire if she was okay with a guest using her room for a couple of nights, but Sam is a billion times more okay with crashing on the makeout sofa than he is with crashing in a nine-year-old girl's bedroom.)

“Cas?” Sam calls, wandering into the living room while checking his phone for texts from Jess. “So Dean told Ellen about your cold and she sent like a gallon of chicken soup over. It's in the kitchen if you w...”

He stops, having just looked up from his phone. He honestly hadn't expected to see Castiel for a while, assuming he was sequestered in the land of dead languages and broken pottery, but the couch Sam had been about to sit down on is, in fact, fully occupied by knocked-out anthropologist. There's a book open on his chest, a knitted throw tangled around one leg. And it's not like Sam studies his face that often, but he looks rough – too much color in his cheeks, too pale everywhere else, a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead, mouth slightly open. His breathing sounds dry, shallow, a little wheezy.

“Ah, shit,” Sam says. Clearly Cas's definition of “cold” is like Dean's: if it's anywhere short of hospitalization, Dean insists “'sjus'a col', man,” and proceeds to hack up a lung. Sam kicks the side of the couch lightly. “Cas?” he says, a little louder.

Cas wakes with a start and a snort, half-rising and nearly falling off the couch. The book and blanket both hit the floor. Sam bites the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

“Fhkghuh,” Cas says, more or less, and he sounds just as rough as he looks. “Sam?” He squints along the couch.

“Hi,” Sam says. “Sorry, I didn't...”

Cas interrupts him with a cough. He holds up a finger in apology, covers his mouth, tries to choke it to a halt, but it just keeps going. Sam frowns at him while he pulls his legs up, hunches over his knees and coughs and coughs.

“You want some water?” Sam asks uncertainly, and when Cas can't even answer, Sam shuffles back to the kitchen to pour a glass.

After a few on-and-off minutes in which Cas sips water and sucks in hurried breaths between hacking fits, it finally seems to be done with. Cas has moved around to sit on one end of the couch and Sam's at the other end, watching Cas with mounting worry.

“Dude,” Sam says at length. “Are you sure you're okay?”

Cas waves a hand vaguely. “It was only a scratchiness last night,” he rasps, gesturing at his throat. “The stuffiness is already clearing, though. I'm sure this is just the last of it breaking up.”

Sam calls bullshit internally, but decides not to say anything. Years of living with Dean have made him unwilling to prod too hard at a sick person in denial.  
It's an awkward evening because Cas is so tired. Usually Sam never has trouble talking with Castiel. They'll get on the topic of law or culture or books or TV or writing and it'll be midnight before either of them knows it. A lot of times Dean's there to complain about being left out, or to interrupt by distracting Cas with not-so-subtle touches that make Sam throw coasters and remotes at him, but sometimes Dean leaves them alone to, as he says, nerdgasm in peace. And sometimes, rarely, Dean isn't there at all.

Which is usually fine, but tonight every painful effort Sam makes at conversation is met by vague, tired-sounding agreement, then silence. Sam gives up, reads for a while with the TV set to some brainless police procedural for background noise, and finds himself dreadfully missing Charlie's PS4. He wonders how Cas would take to gaming. Maybe Assassin's Creed? He would have fun picking apart the historical innaccuracy, if nothing else. It had been Sam, not Dean, who'd accidentally discovered one day that National Treasure and The Mummy are stupid, secret, guilty pleasures of Cas's.

Sam does manage to sweet-talk Cas into eating some soup and crackers, and Cas seems to wake up a little bit to his surroundings once he's got the hot bowl in his hands. “Thank you for this,” he says, stirring and looking vaguely guilty.

Sam shrugs, halfway through his own bowl and thinking about seconds. The Roadhouse might be mostly about the beer and burgers, but Ellen herself is a mean hand at anything she sets her mind to in the kitchen, and the soup is delicious. “Don't worry about it,” Sam says once he swallows. “It's flu season, anyway – Ellen's probably made a tanker truck's worth of chicken soup by now. She sends it out to friends, Roadhouse regulars, whoever. And then she calls to yell at you to take care of yourself. It's aggressive compassion.”

Cas manages to laugh without triggering another coughing fit. “I'm sorry, I'm a terrible host right now. I'm sure the back room at the Roadhouse would have been more welcoming.”

Sam shakes his head emphatically. “You can't help being sick, man. And trust me, I'd rather be here than making a pallet on the pool table like _some_ regulars of Ellen's pretend they don't do.” Sam rolls his eyes. Everyone knows Ash the mulletted M.I.T. dropout who sells weed out of his van and spends nearly all his time in Ellen's bar. She has a soft spot for the guy, who repays her hospitality by keeping her computer system freakishly cutting edge for an otherwise old-fashioned establishment. He's a nice guy, if strange, and he seems perfectly content with his transient but friend-filled life.

But no more than an hour after they finish dinner, Cas can't stop slumping and then jerking himself awake again during a rerun of Cosmos. He looks vaguely green around the gills. Sam can't pinpoint exactly what seems worse about him, but his air of general misery is plenty to convince Sam that whatever Cas might say, his illness is _not_ on the verge of ending.

“Cas, are you sure you're okay?” Sam asks tentatively, while Neil deGrasse Tyson explains gravity in the background.

Cas sighs deeply. “I'm fine,” he says, but it's barely more than a croaky whisper. “I'm sorry, Sam, I think I'm going to turn in early. I should've done the sheets and...” Cas gestures vaguely at the couch.

“I got it,” Sam says. “Go to bed, man.”

Cas shuffles away to the bedroom, then returns a moment later with an armful of pillows. “Dean's,” he says. “Disease-free, I promise.” Sam laughs.

Sam hunts down the spare sheets and a blanket, and just to be safe he sprays down the couch with the Lysol he found under the kitchen sink before he makes it up as a bed and crashes on it. It's a nice couch – long enough for Sam's redwood legs, and that's saying something. He watches another Cosmos, too dozy to read any more, on the verge of sleep himself.

Around nine he jerks awake to the sound of his phone buzzing. _Just got out of business dinner,_ says the text from Dean. _Called cas but no answer, yall ok?_

_Fine,_ Sam sends back. _Hes asleep hes still pretty sick. About to hit the sack too._

_K,_ says Dean. _Night sam._

_Night,_ Sam says, and hits the switch on the lamp next to him.

\---

A loud thunk wakes Sam.

He wakes abruptly, but orientation takes its sweet time. It's pitch black – he remembers where he is after a dizzy second – and he has no idea what time it is, or, for just a second, what day it is.

He groans, blinks hard a few times, then fumbles for his phone. The light of the screen is bright and grounding. It's 4:30 a.m. He turns the phone around to use as a light. A mound of furry, purring cat is loafing across his calves, making his left leg tingle with lack of circulation. The other cat is on the back of the couch, legs splayed, snoring faintly.

Wait. Loud noise. Loud, thunking noise, like a heavy thing falling over. Like a bookcase falling over or something. He'd blame it on the cats, but – they're right here. Did he just dream it? He hadn't been dreaming at all, as far as he can tell. He tries to think back – it was real, definitely real. He wonders if it woke Cas up. Or was it Cas? Or was it someone else, someone who shouldn't be here?

Shit, now he's thought too hard and he's too awake to go back to sleep without at least a minimal investigation. And he has to piss, anyway. So he gets up, much to the irritation of Tribble (who had claimed his legs for a bed), and heads down the hall towards the bathroom without bothering to turn any lights on. His phone screen is plenty bright enough.

The light in the bathroom is on, the door slightly ajar. Sam squints into the brightness, clicking his phone off. Must be Cas, then.

Sam knocks on the doorframe. “Cas?” he says softly, still sleep-raspy. “'D'you hear that?”

No answer. Wait, why is the door ajar if Cas is in there? Sam blinks himself to his senses a little more and hesitantly peers around the edge of the doorframe, lightly touching the door to push it in another inch or so.

Full wakefulness slams into Sam on the front of a wave of adrenaline. His breath catches for a second and then he's pushing the door wide open, stumbling in and dropping to his knees next to Castiel's prone form.

He's sprawled nearly face-down on top of one arm, the other arm still curled around the base of the toilet, legs folded in such a way that he was clearly kneeling before he fell. The bathtub is crowded right next to the toilet, in the direction Cas fell, and Sam glances over – there's a minuscule smudge of red on the edge of the tub rim. Sam's stomach flips.

“Cas? Shit, shit, shit.” Sam grabs his nearest hand – it's cold as ice – and tries to remember how Jess taught him to check a pulse. He finds it, finally. It's hummingbird fast. “Cas?” Sam pulls him over by the shoulder to get a look at his face, touches his forehead. It's clammy, sweaty, cold, and he looks pale as paper, the shock of his hair more starkly black than usual against his bloodless skin.

Sam prods at his head, finally finds the spot that comes away red, and combs through Cas' hair to find the wound. A little relief zings through him, because it's tiny – no more than a faintly abraded bruise, and although it may make an impressive lump, it's already stopped bleeding.

Finally, finally, Cas stirs. His eyelids flutter and he reaches up arthritically with one hand to flail for Sam's arm. “Cas,” Sam says over and over, “hey, man, hey, wake up, you scared me.”

“'msorry,” Cas mumbles, getting a weak grip on Sam's wrist. “'mnots'good. Sorry.”

“Damn right you're not good,” Sam says. “Can you sit up?”

Slowly, with a lot of stops and starts, Cas lets Sam lever him upright and lean him against the tub. Sam finally glances at the toilet, reaches over and flushes it.

Cas is breathing a little more deeply now, and his eyes are more open. “Fuck,” he sighs.

“What happened?” Sam asks, getting up to find a glass and pour a shot of mouthwash in it. He holds it out to Cas, but he doesn't seem to have the strength or will to raise his hands anymore, so Sam picks up his hand and wraps it around the glass until Cas gets the hang of it and holds on. He swishes a couple of times, spits in the glass, and Sam washes it and refills it with water instead. This time Cas takes it willingly.

Cas closes his eyes and says, “Dunno. 'S never happened before. I hate throwing up but I've never passed out.”

“You definitely passed out?” Sam asks, kneeling again.

“I could feel it coming on,” Cas says, swallowing hard. “I thought it was another heave but then everything got still and I could hear, uh. White noise. And uh.” His breathing quickens and his hand holding the glass trembles. “Fuck,” he says, sounding pained but resigned. “'M gonna throw up again.”

“Dammit.” Sam grabs the water glass and shoves Cas back in the direction of the toilet just in time.

There isn't anything left to come up, but Cas dry-heaves and clings onto the seat for dear life. Sam hovers, afraid to leave him alone just to pass out and hit his head again, but too awkward to really offer comfort or figure out something useful to do.

At last, Cas sags and presses his forehead to the seat, breathing ragged but deep. “I hate everything,” he croaks.

Sam awkwardly pats his shoulder. “You gonna pass out?”

Cas breathes in silence for a minute, then says, “I don't think so.”

Sam hovers uncertainly while Cas sits very still and breathes like it's the most difficult thing he's ever done. But then Sam thinks, what if this was Dean? Why am I acting any different? Which crumbles the wall of distance between him and his ex-professor – he realizes he feels so strange about this because despite some morning-after mishaps, he's still used to seeing Cas as _Dr. Novak_ , buttoned-down and stiff and intellectual. Not wrecked and K.O.'d by a plain old virus.

Dean, though, Dean he's used to taking care of. Even though Dean whines like a child when he's sick, Sam's long used to funnelling liquids down his throat and all but putting medicine in rolled-up bits of bread and peanut butter to make Dean swallow it. And Dean usually thanks him later, even if that thanks comes in the form of a noogie.

With that bolstering thought in mind, Sam no longer hesitates. He goes over into Cas and Dean's bedroom, grabs the nearest pillow and a blanket, and heads back to the bathroom, where Cas hasn't moved and is looking faintly green again.

Sam drops the stuff on the floor, then reaches down and hauls Cas up by the forearms. “Come on,” Sam grunts, while Cas staggers upright like so much dead weight. Sam kicks the pillow over to where Cas was sitting and desposits the man on it, then much more gently drapes the blanket over Cas' shoulders. “Get it all out,” Sam says, “and try not to fall on the tub again.” He refills the water glass, sets it on the floor close enough for Cas to reach. “Take a swallow whenever you can,” Sam adds kindly.

Cas just leans his cheek onto porcelain and prods at his hairline with trembling fingers and a grimace.

While Cas sits and shivers and contemplates evacuating everything he's eaten for the last month, Sam heads out towards the kitchen. There's no use trying to go back to sleep now. He really, really does need to take a leak, but there's no way in hell he's making Cas move to do it. Feeling weird about it, he sidles down the hall to Claire's room, which he knows has a tiny half-bath off of it, because Cas said he'd wanted her to have as much of an independent space as possible.

Claire's bathroom is very My Little Pony-themed, the tiny countertop a tangled mess of neon hairbands and glittery nail polishes, and Sam rushes through his morning routine, hair on end. He's never felt so invasive in his life.

Refreshed and awake at last, Sam heads back to the kitchen. He goes hunting through the cabinets and finds crackers – Ritz, not the best, too buttery – and a few cans of soup – tomato, probably too acidic for Cas to keep down. No tea, because Cas and Dean are both intense coffee people. With a long-suffering sigh, Sam turns to an old emergency standby that Dean taught him how to make years ago. There's a half-empty box of chicken broth in the fridge, two eggs left in an 18-egg carton. Do these men never shop?

Sam gets a small saucepan, dumps the broth into it, gets it boiling while he beats the eggs in a bowl with a fork. Personally, as far as interacting with a kitchen goes, Sam's doing good to boil water without hurting himself or setting something on fire. But when they were kids, the first thing Dean ever taught him how to make was the world's easiest, cheatiest egg drop soup, and Sam's never forgotten it and never screwed it up. Probably because it's not actually possible to screw up.

He pours the egg over the fork into the boiling broth and it cooks on contact, into filmy, floaty, eggy tentacles. He whisks the fork in the pan a bit to clean it off and break up the big egg chunks, then turns off the heat. It'll be way too hot to eat as-is, so Sam leaves it on the stove and goes back to the bathroom to check on Cas.

Who appears to be... asleep, face mashed into his arm, which is resting on the toilet seat. His brow is furrowed and sheened with sweat, hair stuck up every which way. The blanket has half fallen off his shoulders. It's the most pathetic thing Sam has ever seen, and he's seen Dean with strep throat.

“Cas,” Sam says, crouching. He reaches out and touches the back of his hand to Cas' forehead, the way Ellen always does to him, Dean, or Jo, whenever one of them feels shitty. It's clammy, but not as freezing cold as it was earlier. “Cas, wake up.”

Cas stirs. He makes a weak noise of protest.

“Get back in bed,” Sam says. “Dean'll kill me if he hears I let you sleep on the toilet.”

Cas snorts faintly.

With much grunting and complaining and not-so-kind needling, Sam manages to get Cas upright and leads him back to his own bed, where he collapses into a shivering, runny-nosed ball of misery. Sam touches his head again to find it warmer than it had been mere minutes before.

“Great,” Sam mutters.

He goes back to the bathroom for the abandoned pillow and blanket, deposits them at the foot of Cas' bed. He finds the nearest small trash can, dumps its meager contents into the big kitchen bin, lines it with a plastic bag, plonks it on the floor by Cas' head – only visible now by the mane of black hair sticking out from under the blanket he's dragged up from the foot of the bed.

“You need to sit up and drink some soup in a minute,” Sam says loudly.

Cas moans. It's so pitiful that Sam smacks his face into his hand and goes back to the kitchen.

Sam finds the Lysol he used on the sofa last night and runs the can completely empty by spraying and wiping every surface Cas could possibly have touched in the last twenty-four hours. He tosses the can, gets a piece of paper out of his class notebook, makes a list. (Lysol, saltines, soup, eggs, gatorade.) He hesitates, then adds (tea, fresh ginger, honey), because as woo-woo as Dean insists it is, Sam's firmly on Team Ginger Lemon Zinger for settling a rough stomach (vs. Dean's Team Chug The Whole Bottle Of Pepto).

At last deeming the soup cool enough, he tips some into a mug and heads back to the bedroom.

Cas has uncurled some, face now clear of the covers, and there's dark pink verging on red high in his cheeks that Sam doesn't like the look of at all. He sets the mug on the bedside table and touches Cas' forehead one more time. Not too hot yet, but definitely not normal.

“Damn it,” Sam sighs. He stomps back to the bathroom, but for all his searching, he can't find hide nor hair of a thermometer. He wets a washcloth, grabs the bottle of ibuprofen off the counter, stomps back to the bedroom.

Cas has cracked his eyes open a tiny bit.

“Who do you think you are, Superman?” Sam grouses at him, folding the washcloth over and slapping it on his forehead. “This apartment is the least equipped for dealing with the flu of any place ever.”

“I never get sick,” Cas croaks. Sam thinks he's trying to look indignant, but it's just sad.

Sam rolls his eyes, pops out three pills, and makes Cas sit up and swallow them, then sip water and soup to Sam's satisfaction. The whole ordeal takes half an hour, at the end of which Cas looks like he's run a marathon. Except that's not true, because Cas runs marathons and he doesn't look this bad at the end of them.

At last, Cas lies back down with a whimper, balls up, and falls perfectly still. “Everything hurts,” he whispers.

Sam pats him kindly on the shoulder, re-settles his cool washcloth. “Welcome to being human.”

Sam would like to feel saintly, but he just feels wrung out. He'd kill for a nap, but he decides he'd better get everything over with before he lets himself crash. He adds (thermometer, ibuprofen, decongestant) to his list; then, thinking about himself for half a second, also (bread, milk, food???), because there is literally nothing in the kitchen he can sustain himself on for a weekend. Cas was probably planning to be all nice and hostly, cooking something himself or ordering out or who-knew-what. Clearly not gonna happen.

He drags on pants, shoes, jacket. Stumbles to his car, drags his worn-out butt to the store. Drags his cart around, looking at food, too tired now to think about what he might want to eat. Reasonably loaded up, he drags himself back to the car and then the apartment and then up the stairs.

The sun is just rising when he gets back in. For a blissful second, he thinks about putting this stuff up, crawling back onto the sofa and going back to sleep.

Then he's greeted by the joyous sound of Cas puking again.

It's going to be a long weekend.

\---

Sam 10:11 _I deserve a medal_  
D 10:15 _yeah a darwin award_  
Sam 10:16 _for nursing your gross puking disease ridden bf thru the bowels of flu hell_  
D 10:18 _what? he didnt tell me it was bad_  
Sam 10:18 _he's too busy turning inside out_  
After a minute of no response, Sam hears Cas' phone buzz in the other room. Sam rolls his eyes.  
Sam 10:21 _dont bother he's zonked out on so much tussin rn he wouldnt hear you yelling in his ear_  
Sam 10:22 _dont freak out its just flu_  
D 10:24 _I wouldn't have gone if I knew he was really sick_  
Sam 10:26 _yeah I know_  
Sam 10:26 _don't come back ok_  
Sam 10:27 _I got this you have fun and do your car thing_  
The longer the phone stays silent, the more Sam worries that Dean's already shoved it in his pocket, dashed to his car, and rocketed out of Redding. But then:  
D 10:42 _ok_  
D 10:42 _take care of him_  
Sam 10:44 _mother hen_  
D 10:45 _*pile of shit emote_

\---

At noon, Cas manages three whole crackers and a glass of water. At one, he's heaving again.

Sam sleeps through it this time. He crashes hard, finally unable to resist the pull of the soft, soft sofa, and he doesn't even care that Lady climbs up to knead his belly while he's slipping off to sleep.

He wakes late in the afternoon to dry, rattling coughing from the kitchen. He sits up groggily, pushing Lady off his chest and smacking his tongue against the roof of his foul-tasting mouth. He's hungry, still sleepy, feels gross from lack of showering. Not sick, though. He hasn't caught the lurgy. And he doesn't intend to, the way he's been soaking his hands in sanitizer after every time he goes near Cas.

He's amazed Cas is upright, to be honest. And a little concerned that he's in the kitchen, around sharp things and fire. Sam stumbles off the couch, goes to investigate what Cas is doing.

“Hey,” Sam rasps, thumbing sleep grit out of his eyes. “Any better?”

Cas doesn't answer for a minute. Sam squints at him. He's got a blanket around his shoulders and is hunched over the stove like he's about ninety years old. Sam walks over to poke him in the shoulder.

Cas glances over at him and now Sam can see that he's not answering because his jaw is clenched tight. He's leaning over a plain pot of boiling water, head wreathed in steam. Cas pries his jaw open and says, “'S'c-c-c-cold,” before snapping his mouth shut again against the chattering.

Sam sighs. Another forehead touch proves that yeah, Cas is wracked with chills. Standing over steam is actually one of the most useful things he's done for himself today, so Sam leaves him to it. He peels a chunk of sharply scented fresh ginger and plonks it into a mug of water, then microwaves it to a simmer and adds a teabag. He sets it on the counter by the stovetop without a word and goes about making himself a sandwich.

Cas manages to be up and about for most of the evening. He gives up trying to steam his cough out after a while, takes the armchair in the living room, gathers an enormous pile of blankets around himself, and clutches his cooling tea in abject misery while Sam channel-surfs and pokes around on the internet.

“I'm so sorry,” Cas keeps apologizing over and over. “You don't have to stay. I'm awful company. You've done so much already, I'll be fine.”

Sam shakes his head every time. He really does appreciate being offered an out, because nobody wants to spend their weekend taking care of someone with the flu, but he's also not such a shithead that he doesn't realize it's way worse to _be_ someone with the flu. And it's way, _way_ worse to have the flu and cope with it alone, huddled immobile in an increasingly disgusting nest of sweaty sheets and used tissues. Sam would never do that to anyone, but particularly not to Cas, who's practically his brother-in-law.

“Dean would kill me,” is what he says out loud. “I mean, we're talking drawing dicks on my face every night for a year, Nair in every shampoo I buy for the rest of my life, superglue on everything I own, my life would be a living hell.”

Cas mumbles, “Dean is very unreasonable. You're only going to catch this.”

Sam holds up his fingers in a cross as if to exorcise Cas. “You keep your cloud of disease far away from me and we're good.”

Cas laughs weakly.

“Thank you, Sam,” he whispers, and Sam knows that he absolutely will not leave.

\---

The chills have eased by evening, but Cas is falling over with exhaustion. “Back to bed,” Sam orders, pushing him towards the bedroom.

“Meds,” Cas mumbles, veering down the hall to the bathroom door.

“I'll get 'em,” Sam says, pushing Cas away again. He's seen the neat little line of bottles along the back side of the counter, he knows what he's looking for.

Cas doesn't, or possibly can't, fight him about it. He staggers off to bed. Sam goes to the bathroom, grabs the three orange prescription bottles. He checks the labels, only thinking to make sure that they all say 'one daily' and nothing more complicated. What he notices first, instead, is the big ol' blaring red notice at the bottom of two of them that says 'take with food'. Cas hasn't kept anything solid down all day, although Sam thinks he's reasonably hydrated.

“Hey, man,” Sam says, walking back into the bedroom, where Cas is painstakingly trying to make the covers less of a rat's nest. “You sure? This says it causes nausea if you take it on an empty stomach.”

Cas sits arthritically on the edge of the bed. “I missed yesterday,” he says hoarsely. “I really shouldn't keep skipping.”

Sam frowns. “You're starting to keep water down, at least. Think you could eat a cracker or two before you take these?”

Cas goes pale. “Mmm,” he says, weak and unwilling.

Sam chews his lip. “What if you're feeling better in the morning, could you take them then?”

“I suppose,” Cas croaks. “One of them makes me sleepy, it's why I take them at night.”

Sam shrugs. “You'll need the rest anyway.”

Cas sighs. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.” He slides sideways until he's lying down. “I hate my spine,” he groans. “My spine hates me.”

“You almost sang the Barney song,” Sam says, grinning.

“I'm going to die.”

Sam laughs. It might be uncharitable to laugh at sick people, but hey, he's used to being around a sick Dean. Cas is a teddy bear in comparison. “Good night.”

“Night, Sam.”

Now, Sam does feel slightly saintly. He shoots Dean a text before settling down to bed himself: _Cas much better, hope you're having fun & not panicking over nothing._

He goes to sleep before he gets a reply.

\---

Cas is not better the next morning. Cas is much, much worse the next morning.

The fever that had barely raised its head on Saturday and been knocked out with a hint of ibuprofen is now in full raging-inferno mode. Cas is no longer capable of being upright. He shivers and shudders and thrashes in the bedroom, unable to get cool or comfortable, while Sam makes ice compresses wrapped in kitchen towels and brings Cas wet washcloths to bury his sweaty face in.

Getting Cas to eat something is the last thing on Sam's mind. He coaxes Cas into drinking water, but he manages significantly less than yesterday. His cough is still there, worse, dry and hacking; his skin is hot and papery. Sam gets some more ibuprofen in him but it doesn't seem to make a change. He leaves Cas alone in the bedroom to rest but all he can hear is coughing, and he's too distracted to focus on anything himself. He had a little bit of reading to get done this weekend, but his eyes slide over the pages without taking in anything. He puts the TV on an old movie, but it's too hard to concentrate on; he puts it on a football game, but he can't get invested enough to care; he finally ends up on some Disney Channel cartoon just because the bright colors and lack of plot are all he has the mental energy to deal with.

Midafternoon his phone buzzes with a text from Dean. It startles Sam, who hasn't had his brain on straight all day and hasn't looked at his phone once. Turns out he'd missed a middle-of-the-night response to his text from last night – Dean had said _great! Thx sammy._

Sam's guts do an unhappy squirm. The current text says, _Bobby ripped steve whitehall a new one for being a flake and a cheat, he's gonna wear the guys spine for a necklace i'm so happy I could cry._

Dean's focused on his car show, on networking, on business... exactly where his mind needs to be. Sam bites hard on the inside of his cheek. Christ, he should tell Dean that Cas isn't okay. There is no reason on God's green earth that justifies not telling Dean that his practically-husband is writhing with a horrendous fever even as they type.

Except. Except.

Sam's fingers hover over the keypad for the longest time. Finally, he wins some kind of internal battle with himself, and settles on a compromise.

_Don't let bobby get arrested,_ he sends as one text. Then, as another, _Cas still feeling bad but says hi and fuck steve._

Cas has said no such thing, but Sam has no doubt that he would if he were able.

_Hes still not answering his phone,_ Dean sends.

Sam's stomach lurches. Damn it, think lies through before you say them! Quickly, he types, _hes just too wiped out, hes almost asleep again._ (Probably true.)

_ok,_ says Dean. _Wont ask you to give him a kiss for me, prolly wouldnt kiss him if I were there._

_Yeah no,_ Sam says. _He's contagious as hell._ (Definitely true.)

_ok_

(Sam can practically feel Dean's suspicion in two tiny letters.)

_well take care of both of you,_ Dean adds.

_Will do,_ Sam replies, feeling horrendously guilty even though the logical part of his brain thinks it's a total overreaction.

He crawls onto the sofa and takes a fitful nap.

\---

Castiel's fever does not break.

Sam's concern level is creeping up with every hour that passes. He had a surge of panic a few hours ago, texted Jess even though he's promised not to bug her when she's on hospital rotation or abuse her nursing degree to get free medical advice. He'd briefly explained that Cas had flu and a fever and was dehydrated, and should he go to the ER or not?

_if 104 dark urine or ab pain er if not dont spread,_ she'd said, so short it was easy to read as terse. Sam told himself she wasn't mad, just incredibly busy. And it was information he'd already known, anyway.

But Cas' fever has only averaged 100, with one spike to 103 (which had triggered Sam's texting panic). He's drinking, barely, just a sip at a time, but Sam remembers a trick Jess showed him and presses on Cas' fingernails – they don't stay white where they've been squeezed, but refill steadily with pink. So he's probably not going to die of dehydration.

Sam's more worried now about his increasing lethargy. He's still hot to the touch, but has stopped thrashing in search of cool air. He won't eat, won't even make the effort. When Sam asks if he still feels like he's gonna puke, he gives a weary half-shrug. And when Sam asks if he has any pain, Cas just furrows his brow and whispers, “I don't know.”

Cas goes to sleep. Sam tells himself sleep is what he needs most, and retreats the sofa to disinfect his hands again and lie there worrying.

\---

Sam wakes with a start at half past one in the morning on Monday. Once again, it's a loud thud that sends him reeling out of dreams and into unwelcome reality. He might be imagining things, but it seems like the air in the apartment has gotten stuffy, close, and overly warm since Cas got sick. Sam suddenly, desperately wants to go outside and get some air.

First he needs to investigate the thump, though. Sourness seeps into his mouth at the thought that Cas might have fainted and hit his head again. Just because he'd been okay the first time didn't mean he'd be so lucky again.

When Sam stumbles to the hall, however, there aren't any lights on, bathroom or otherwise. Sam squints into the dark, feeling along the wall to the bathroom door, and reaches inside to hit the switch just to give himself a little light to navigate by. Cas isn't in the bathroom, he notes with relief.

Able to see where he's going, he heads down to the bedroom door. It's closed and he doesn't hear any sounds from behind it, but he knocks quietly anyway. “Cas?” he says, soft in case the man is actually still asleep and Sam just imagined a noise. “You okay?”

There's a faint moan.

Sam immediately cracks the door open and lets the dim light filter around the corner into the room.

Cas has fallen off the bed. He's lying in an uncomfortable-looking sprawl, half-covered with the blanket that had gotten dragged down with him, and his eyes are open just a crack, peering Sam's direction.

“Sam,” he says, so faintly Sam has to take a couple steps into the room to be sure he spoke.

“You okay?” Sam repeats, kneeling, heart thudding.

“No,” Cas says weakly. “I don't. I don't feel right.” He jerks and rolls an inch more to his back, like he'd just received an electric shock. He winces and rolls his head. “Evvthing's. Dunno. Fuck.” His hands curl into fists, then uncurl. “Don' feel... like... 'mreal, likeuh. 'sthis. 'sthis a hearttack?” He jerks again.

Okay, so Sam doesn't panic easy. Obviously. But after four days and literally all the health care he knows how to administer, Cas is not only getting worse, he's getting weirder. He sounds drunk. Like, just put away a line of shots after downing a six-pack drunk.

Sam touches his forehead again. The fever's down, way down. Cas nearly feels normal again, temperature-wise. But he's absolutely pouring sweat. Which is fine, Sam knows that's what happens when a fever breaks, and hey, the fever broke! That's great! But Cas really, really can't take the extra dehydration right now.

Cas jerks again.

Sam steadies him, puts hands on his shoulders. “What is that, are you hurting? Is that pain?”

“Bees,” Cas mutters.

“Okay,” Sam says, heart racing. “Okay, that's it, we're going to the emergency room.”

Cas whuffs out a long breath between pursed lips but Sam knows it's the right call because he doesn't even object.

The next hour passes in a blur. Sam's deliriously tired himself, and Cas is only so much dead weight. As soon as Sam gets him upright, it turns out that Cas can't maintain verticality on his own. He's so dizzy he can't even look at Sam without his eyes rolling. Sam gets sweatpants and sandals on him, pulls his own pants and shoes on, grabs his phone, wallet, and keys, and forgets everything else entirely as they stagger drunkenly out to the car.

Cas collapses into the car, white-knuckles the edges of the seat like he's in a roller coaster. He looks more terrified than sick anymore.

“I don't know what's happening,” he whimpers as Sam rounds another curve as gently as possible.

“Don't worry,” Sam says, white-knuckling the wheel. “Get you to the hospital. It's gonna be okay.”

The hospital itself is a mess. Without abdominal pain or, like, arterial blood spraying everywhere, there's no way to jump the line. It feels like it takes forever to get into a room, forever again for a nurse to come around and ask what's wrong.

Sam explains for what feels like the eightieth time since they walked into the hospital. “It was just the flu,” he says helplessly. “And the fever broke and everything, but he's just so _dizzy_ now, and -”

Cas raises a hand with absurd calm, like he's asking a question in class. “Excuse me,” he says, “I'm going to be sick.”

The nurse hands him the little trashcan from the corner with ninja-like reflexes. “So,” she says, writing quickly. “Persistent nausea, dizziness.”

“Bees,” Cas gasps between dry-heaves.

The nurse squints at Sam. Sam shrugs.

“Stinging,” Cas gasps. “Everywhere. Hurts.”

“Stinging?” the nurse asks. “Sharp pains?”

Cas whimpers. The nurse scribbles a quick extra note. Sam sees her underline something.

“Doctor'll be here in a few,” the nurse says, with a sympathetic glance at Sam, and then she's gone.

During the interminable wait for the doctor, Sam looks at his phone to find that it is now three in the morning. He's completely, utterly fucked for going to classes. No way is he even going to try. He pulls up his email, writes notes to his professors that he won't make it in. Then, at long last, he pulls up his messages and looks at the last words from Dean. 'Take care of both of you.'

Feeling heavy with sleep deprivation and guilt, he types: _Don't panic, but I'm with Cas in the ER right now. His symptoms are weird. I think the flu is over tho. Update when the doc sees him._

Dean doesn't repond, and Sam breathes a sigh of relief that the text buzz didn't wake him up.

Cas spends the next half-hour waiting for the doctor with the trashcan huddled between his knees, head nearly inside it, taking deep, practiced breaths. He hasn't actually puked since there's nothing to come up, but every now and then his breath hitches with another unsuppressable heave.

At long last, a short woman with fine features and a shoulder-length sheet of black hair pushes the door open. “Hi,” she says, shaking Sam's hand briefly, “I'm Tessa. Mr. Novak?” She walks over to the patient bed. “Do you think you can look up?”

Cas raises his head with a pained sigh.

She quizzes him quickly on the same stuff over again while she goes over him with flashlight, tongue depressor, stethoscope, the usual. He answers in clipped phrases, tone curt. Her cheerful, calm demeanor doesn't change – she must be used to it, doesn't take it personally.

At last she drags over a stool and sits. “Okay,” she says. “The sharp pains, tell me about that.”

“Just. In my skin. Constant. Like being tazered. I guess. I've never been tazered.”

She smiles. “And the fever's broken, but the cold sweats are persistent.”

“Yes.”

She flipped into the paperwork he'd filled out in the waiting room. “You listed some meds here - paroxetine, lithium?”

“Yes.”

“When did you take them last?”

“Um,” Cas says. “Thursday.”

“He wouldn't have kept them down,” Sam says, feeling vaguely defensive.

“I understand,” she says, holding up her hand. “How long have you been taking them?”

“Seven years...”

“Ever missed a dose?”

“No.”

She smiles kindly. “Okay, well, I can tell you from long experience that although the pharmacy reps don't want you to think paroxetine has any side effects, it actually has a very well-documented discontinuation syndrome. I think that's what you're feeling.”

“What?” Cas croaks.

“Like withdrawal?” Sam furrows his brow.

“It... in many ways can mimic heroin withdrawal,” she says carefully. “Which also feels like flu symptoms. You definitely have flu,” she adds quickly. “But the nausea you have now is more likely from discontinuation. The stinging and dizziness are the most common symptoms. Cold-turkeying off SSRIs is always difficult, but add the loss of fluid and nutrients, and it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. Flu squared.”

Cas slowly puts his arm across the top of the trash can, then leans his head on it. “Make it stop,” he says pitifully.

Tessa writes something on Cas' papers. “Someone's going to come take some blood, we're going to run a panel, just to rule out anything else. And while we're waiting for that to come back I'm going to give you something for nausea. Okay?”

“Please,” Cas sighs. “While I still have some organs left.”

Tessa laughs lightly. She rolls forward, pats Cas on the knee. “Becky's gonna be right back with that medicine and I just want you to to try to rest.” She looks over at Sam. “Are you here to stay? Do you need to call someone?”

Sam sort of simultaneously shakes and nods his head. He squeezes his eyes closed, says, “No, I mean, I'm good, I'm here.”

“Good,” she says. “You're a good friend.”

“Uh, brother,” Sam says without thinking. He's getting deliriously tired. In his head, he meant something about Dean, brother, friend of brother's boyfriend; there are too many iterations of “friend” stuck in his head and he can't quite cope with English at nearly 4 am on a Monday. Cas, meanwhile, is too busy breathing heavily over the trash can to correct him.

“Hang in there,” says Tessa, and then she's gone.

A bouncy little nurse with wide eyes and pink cheeks brings anti-nausea pills, a syringe, a bunch of vials. She seems extra nervous and tittery around Sam, but her hands are steady when she draws blood from Cas' arm. Cas curls up against the wall, eyes closed; Sam loses track of time; he starts to doze off, is pretty sure Cas is, too.

Sam starts awake to the sound of a knock, then the door opening right away. He blinks blearily at Tessa, who looks more tired than she did earlier. Sam glances at his phone; it's 6 am now.

“Sorry for the wait,” says Tessa. She nods at Cas' prone figure; he's fully asleep, mouth slightly open, slouched against the wall. “I'm sorry to ask, but he needs to be awake.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” Sam scoots closer, reaches out to shake Cas by the foot. Cas starts up.

“Apologies,” he says, digging the heel of his hand into his eyes.

“Nausea any better?”

Slowly, Cas nods. “Everything... is spinning. It's like... seasickness. But. Distant.”

“Good,” says Tessa, flipping through some papers. “So, I'm not thrilled with your levels. You're borderline severely dehydrated. The easiest way to knock out the withdrawal symptoms will be to start your meds again at their usual dose, but I don't want you to take them until you're a little more normalized. If you take them running on empty like this it'll just shock your system into more nausea. You think you could eat or drink now?”

Cas makes an extremely dubious sound, looking terrified at the suggestion. “I feel like if I take one breath wrong it'll all come back,” he says.

She grimaces. “No, I didn't think so. If you're okay with it, I'd like to move you to a regular room and put you on a fluid drip for the day. I get off at seven and I'll be back again at seven tonight, and I'd run the blood panels again then. The second you can keep it down, start drinking all the water you can, and I'll leave orders for a light meal later on. Sound doable?”

Cas looks miserable at the idea of spending the day in the hospital, so Sam answers for him. “Yeah,” he says. “Yes, that's great. Thank you.” Cas gives him a faint look of betrayal, to which Sam returns a glare.

Tessa smiles wearily at them and stands. She looks at Sam. “You should get some rest, too. If there's anyone you can call...”

Sam starts to automatically say no, no, it's fine, I'll stay, but he hesitates. Dean's going to wake up and get that text sometime in the next few hours, and no doubt he'll be burning southbound rubber the second he reads it. Sam would rather have a nap, shower, and meal under his belt before Dean shows up to shower them all with panic and caustic mothering.

“Uh,” Sam says, rubbing his eyes. Kevin won't be back yet, but Charlie was supposed to have returned last night. Maybe he can call her. She'll be grumpy as fuck to be woken at this ungodly hour, but he only needs her help for a couple hours. “Yeah, I'll get someone,” he says finally.

“Good,” says Tessa. She shakes Sam and then Cas' hands briefly. “I'll see you later, then.”

“I can call Ames,” Cas offers. “I need to call her anyway.”

Sam hadn't even thought of Cas' ex-wife. “Uh, well, don't wake her up just yet,” he says. He knows for a fact that Charlie doesn't have plans for today, and she owes him big for that time he was such an incredible wingman he even stayed out of their house all night so she could bang that Gilda chick from the Renaissance fair in peace. “Let's get moved and everything.”

Half an hour and a whole bunch more uncomfortable eyesexing from Becky the nurse later, Cas is all costumed in backless gown and countless wristbands, and holed up in his own teensy patient room with sink, bathroom, the kind of folding electric bed that Dean is chronically unable to resist screwing with, dextrose-saline IV, and another hit of anti-nausea medication. Within minutes of taking it, he's fallen back into a fitful doze.

Sam calls Charlie, who is predictably not real thrilled to be hearing from her #2 handmaiden at just shy of seven in the morning.

“You're lucky I didn't call you at three,” Sam groans. “Guess where I am.”

She softens as soon as he tells her the situation, and agrees that he needs the chance to crash before Hurricane Dean blows into town. Within half an hour, she's shuffling blearily into Cas' hospital room, holding a coffee cup the size of her head and her computer bag. She flops into the nearest chair, pulls out her phone, and says, “Go forth, be free.”

Sam leans over to give her an awkward one-armed hug. “Thank you so much.”

“You're welcome, princess,” she says, patting him on the back. She makes a face. “For real, though, go take a shower. We didn't need to fumigate the house, just make you not bathe for like three days.”

Sam noogies her, but he can't exactly argue.

He heads back to Cas' apartment, feeds the cats, showers like a zombie, then falls on the sofa and sleeps like the dead.

He wakes to his phone ringing. Dazed, he fumbles it to his ear.

“Whm?”

“It's just great, man, you know, a text from the middle of the night that Cas is in the ER and that you'll tell me what the doc says and then _nothing_ else, really, really wonderful job there.”

“Ah shit,” Sam groans, rolling onto his back and squeezing his eyes shut, then opening them wide. “Hey. I'm sorry, Dean, it's been a long night.”

“Are you going to tell me what's wrong or not?”

Sam shakes his head. “He's fine. Short version, he puked so much he got dehydrated. They're keeping him for the day, on fluids.” He checks the time. It's only been three hours, but he does feel significantly refreshed. Ten in the morning isn't quite the unholy buttcrack of dawn.

“Jesus Christ, I leave for four days!”

“Hey, mm, try maybe driving instead of yelling.” Sam can hear the Impala's roar in the background, not that he would've expected anything else.

“I am fucking driving! Where is he?”

Sam rolls his eyes, tells Dean the hospital and room number, then says, “Dude, it's a five-hour drive and if you get here before three I won't even have to kill you, Cas'll beat you to death with his IV. So slow the hell down and drive _safe,_ okay, asshole?”

Dean grumbles, but he sounds a good deal more even-headed just for hearing Sam's voice. “Fine. Jesus. Can I call him?”

“Oh, uh.” Sam stumbles up, moves around gathering things. “No, here's his phone. He's probably still asleep anyway. I'm at the apartment, just took a nap. Charlie's at the hospital now. Crap, I should call his office...”

Leaving Dean reassured and driving at (hopefully) not too much more than the speed limit, Sam considers the kitchen before texting Charlie instead. _Gonna pick up some breakfast from out you wnt anything?_

Cas is still blessedly conked out when Sam walks back into the hospital room with coffees perched precariously in the crook of his arm, balancing two carry-out containers of diner pancakes, eggs, sausage, and bacon. Charlie jumps up to help.

“You are a god among men, Sam Winchester,” Charlie says, grabbing her plastic fork and shoveling sugary breakfast goodness into her mouth with a moan. “War's great,” she says through a full mouth, “but you can only take so much 'wilderness rations,' you know?”

Sam collapses on the rolling stool the doctor always uses with a sigh. “Exactly how period-accurate are they, anyway?”

Charlie rolls her eyes. “Eh, it's mostly beef jerky and trail mix,” she says. “You know how in books they're always running away from the castle with a loaf of bread, a hunk of cheese and some withered apples? So, newsflash, dry bread and hard cheese, not delicious, and also constipation central.”

Sam laughs. They chat about War, classes, games. Charlie doesn't need to stay, Sam tells her, but she shrugs and says a drugged-out professor is still better company than the online raiding party she's ditching. Sam remembers to call the school and tell Annie that Cas is out sick (she freaks at the news that he's hospitalized, too, and he has to talk her down from the worry cliff). Around noon, a lab tech comes in to draw some more blood, and Cas wakes up.

He pushes upright, blinking against lids sticky with sleep grit, pale and bruised-looking in the baby blue hospital gown. His thin build compared to Sam, or even Dean, stands out more than usual. “Times't?” he grunts.

“Ten o'clock in the morning,” Charlie says in a gruff, deep, fake British accent, “on October the twenty-fourth, if you want to know, Frodo.”

Cas squints at her.

“It's noon,” Sam says loudly, kicking Charlie's chair leg. “Dean's on his way home.”

Cas considers this for a second. “Smell bacon,” he says finally.

“Uh,” says Sam. “Sorry, we had breakfast...”

Cas shakes his head. “'S not making me sick,” he says, then gives a feeble thumbs-up.

Charlie power-fists. “Awesome!”

“Should've saved you some,” says Sam.

Cas groans. “Smell's fine, don't think I could eat it.”

“Water?”

Cas nods.

He seems more awake and alert than he has all weekend. Once he gets started drinking some water, the built-up thirst of four days of dehydration kicks in and he downs a cup and a half before he has to lie back, exhausted from the effort. Becky comes in once to change his IV bag and spends an awful lot of time tripping over Sam's feet and falling into his chest, even though he could swear he got completely out of her way.

A phone rings. Sam and Charlie go hunting to see whose it is. Turns out, it's Cas's. _Dean W,_ predictably.

Sam answers, lowers his voice as deep as it'll go and roughs out, “Hello, Dean.”

“You- Sam, get off the goddamn phone.”

Cas, meanwhile, is trying to find something he can throw at Sam. Sam cackles and puts the phone on speaker. “Okay, say hi, try not to make Cas vomit again.”

“Cas?”

Cas smirks. “Hello, Dean,” he says.

“Wow, you sound like shit.”

Cas rolls his eyes. “Thank you. I'm astonished you weren't fooled by Sam's impeccable mimicry.”

“Ha fuckin' ha. Seriously, babe, you okay?”

“No,” Cas says.

A beat. “Care to _elaborate?”_

Cas sighs. “Well,” he says, “it does feel as though my thoracic cavity was recently vacated by an entire alternate dimensions' worth of eldritch abominations who were using my intestines as their headquarters to plot world domination.”

“... That is both disgusting and terrifyingly specific.”

“Which makes today better than yesterday,” Cas says. “Because yesterday the eldritch abominations were actually in there, and today it just feels like the aftermath of the party. Which is to say my organs have all been extracted, liquified, and poured back into my skin like some sort of Jello mold.”

“Wow, reminder, do not let you near the good drugs again.”

Charlie's cracking up. Sam cuts in. “He's not even on the good drugs,” he says. “This is him on no coffee for five days and a gallon of sugar water injected directly into his veins.”

“In that case, find some of the good drugs and give 'em to him before I get there.”

“Are you on the phone while driving?” Cas snaps accusingly.

“I – yeah, hi, thank you – no, I was in the drivethrough getting lunch until – okay, got it – you too – and _now_ I'm driving while on the phone.”

“Dean, stop endangering Californian motorists everywhere.”

“Not everywhere,” says Dean, and there's a rustling sound and the next sentence is muffled as though his mouth is full. “Jus' on the freeway south of Sacramento.”

“If you don't die in a traffic accident, I will murder you when you get here.”

“Hard to take you seriously when you sound like Christian Bale's Batman voice,” Dean says, chewing. “And I bet you're in one of those hospital getups with your butt hanging out for everyone to see.”

Cas rolls his eyes. “And you're breaking a lot of laws for someone who expects to see this butt again any time in the next month.”

“Eh, liar,” Dean snorts. “Okay, though, this is my exit, I'm hanging up. Just called to tell you I'm a couple hours out. Want me to bring you some cold, greasy fries?”

“I sincerely do not like you, Dean Winchester,” Cas says.

“I love you, too.”

Charlie goes “awww” and then makes a muffled gagging noise.

“Don't,” Cas pleads, paling.

Not half a minute later, Castiel's phone goes off again. Thinking that Dean's come up with one last shot to fire, Sam answers it without looking at the contact name. “Eat and drive or talk and drive, don't do both and it's illegal either way,” he says.

“What? Hello?”

“Uh,” says Sam, jerking the phone away from his ear as if he's been scalded. It's a woman's voice, and the name is... damn it, Amelia.

“Sam?” she says, and Sam brings the phone back to his ear.

“Yeah?”

“I – is Cas -?”

Sam realizes his stupidity a beat too late and tosses the phone to Cas like it's a game of hot potato. Cas fumbles it, drops it in the folds of the hospital blanket, and it takes Charlie's ninja reflexes to grab it before it slides to the floor. Cas glowers at Sam while he puts the phone to his ear.

“Amelia -”

The phone doesn't have to be on speaker for Sam to hear every word: “So I figure you're in class, I call the office to see if you can pick Claire up from school, and _I have to hear from Annie that you're in the hospital?”_

“Ah,” Cas says. “Well. I have a good excuse, which is that I'm in the hospital.”

Sam gestures at Charlie that now would be a good time for a diplomatic retreat. They abandon Cas to his ex-wife, heading out into the hallway to stretch their legs. Charlie breaks into an enormous yawn.

“You should go get some more sleep,” Sam says.

She scratches her neck and looks torn. “Did you get enough of a break? I mean, I can stay...”

Sam shakes his head. “I'm fine. I can't thank you enough for coming.”

“You know I watch out for my handmaidens,” Charlie says with a grin, and goes in for a hug. She makes a little huffy noise against Sam's shoulder. “I guess Cas has to be part of my court, too. Auxiliary handmaiden?”

“Court scribe?”

She giggles. “He's the bard.”

Sam lets go of her. “I'll break him the bad news.”

“I'm gonna get him one of those jester hats.”

“You definitely need to go back to bed.”

“And the two-colored tights.”

“And thaaat's enough of that.”

\---

For the third and, Sam fervently hopes, _final_ time, he's woken from a light sleep by a loud thunking noise.

When he drags his eyes open he half expects to see Castiel on the floor by the hospital bed, but he's just blinking out of a nap, too, pushing himself upright in the bed and turning to look at the door. There's a knock, and the door opens before anyone can answer. It's Becky the nurse again.

“Sorry!” she says. “Ran into the wall, these carts. Um, I brought the buffet... by which I mean soup and jello.”

It must be near the end of her shift because at long last, she seems too tired to flirt uncomfortably with Sam. She does make gooey eyes at him while she pours a can of Sprite into a styrofoam cup of ice, but stops when she almost spills it. She leaves the tray and shuffles out, the very picture of exhaustion.

Sam yawns while Cas sips some soda and eyes the tray of food with distrust. He checks his phone: it's just after three.

“I'm amazed Dean isn't...” Sam starts, but at that very moment there's a loud hammering on the door. Speak of the devil. “Never mind,” Sam mutters.

The door bangs open and Dean strides in all worry-browed and carrying an air of such distress that Sam is silently glad he wasn't around for any of the more dramatic parts of the weekend. He has his travel bag slung over one shoulder, and his slightly-longer-than-he-likes hair is windblown-wild at the front. He does even seem to see Sam, just beelines for the bed.

"Cas! What the hell, man?”

"Don't break the hospital," Cas says mildly.

Dean reaches him, slings his bag to the floor, and immediately slaps a hand to Cas' forehead. “What's wrong? Are you okay?”

Cas laughs. "We're long past the fever part. I'm fine, I swear."

"You're not fine, you're _in the hospital._ I thought this relationship came with an implicit agreement that you're supposed to _not_ keel over and die if I leave town for five minutes! Are you supposed to be eating this soup? You gotta eat something. Holy shit, you look -” Dean breaks off, shakes his head, and abandons words in favor of leaning over Cas and smothering him in a hug.

Cas whuffs. “Love you too please not so hard I might puke on your coat, ow.”

Dean lets go as abruptly as he leaned down. “What the hell happened?”

Cas looks pointedly down the bed to where Sam's still sprawled out in the room's one decent chair, not bothering to interrupt. “You should be lavishing some of this attention on your brother,” Cas says with mild entertainment. “He's seen things he can never unsee.”

Dean rounds on Sam. Sam raises both eyebrows. “I'm still expecting that medal,” he jokes.

“Come here before I change my mind, Sasquatch,” Dean says, and hauls Sam out of the chair for a bear hug.

Over the next half hour, Sam explains what happened. Cas occassionally tries to make an addition, to which Dean responds with a pointed look at the soup Cas is picking at half-heartedly.

“Withdrawal,” Dean says at length, after Sam's finished. Dean looks at Cas, who gives a tiny shrug. “So, it's... are you gonna go back on them, or are you...”

“Yes,” Cas says without a second's hesitation, and Sam and Dean both look at him. He arches an eyebrow as if daring them to object. “The benefits outweigh the potential for accident,” he says. “And this _was_ an accident. If I do intend to stop taking my meds in the future I won't do it cold turkey.”

Dean chews his lip but looks mollified. “Okay,” he says. “It's your brain. You do what you gotta.”

Cas looks guarded and defensive, bites his lip like he wants to say something else, but he lets it go and picks up the little plastic cup of soup, poking it with his spoon. His identifying wristbands hang loose from his thin wrist. “I suppose that soup this bad has to exist to karmically balance out Ellen's cooking,” he says, giving the hospital food a woeful look. He puts a loaded spoonful in his mouth and grimaces.

“Might have been better if you ate it hot,” Dean says.

Cas shakes his head. “Nothing could improve this,” he says mournfully.

Dean coos over him jokingly, calling him a poor picky baby while Cas mutters obscenities and finally eats his food, and Sam just laughs, feeling well and truly relieved for the first time in days.

\---

Sam doesn't leave, even though he supposes he could concede the floor to Dean at this point. He feels somehow obligated to see this through to the end. At the very least, he wants to hang on until Tessa comes back and delivers her verdict on Cas' improvement.

At six, a tech draws yet more blood. Cas eyes all the needles in his elbow with a mildly queasy expression, but he admits that the intense, immediate nausea has faded. He still has stinging, crawling pains in his skin, but they're easier to cope with when he's actually hydrated and fed. Of course, when he finally needs to go to the bathroom, he nearly falls on his ass the second he stands up.

“Still dizzy?” Dean asks, his voice tinged with real worry, not the sarcastic teasing he's kept up most of the afternoon.

“Oh, I don't know,” Cas snaps tensely, clinging to the edge of the bed. “Why are you sideways and why are there five of you?”

Sam leaves the room diplomatically to let Dean deal with helping Cas into the tiny bathroom. Sam wanders down to the nurses' station and checks with them that the doctor named Tessa is supposed to be back at seven. Reassurred that she is indeed scheduled to come in tonight, Sam walks up and down the hall for a while, stretching his legs and getting some air. He's also giving Cas and Dean some alone time – he figures Dean probably needs to get some sappy, caring shit out of his system, and he doesn't feel like accidentally overhearing anymore teeth-rotting heart-to-hearts.

This is how he manages to run into Tessa while she's coming out of an employees-only room still shrugging into her doctor's whites. He'd been keeping to the side of the hall to stay out of the way of the foot traffic, and runs smack into Tessa as she emerges through the door.

“Sorry!” Sam yelps, reaching down to steady Tessa as she stumbles. He recognizes her sheet of black hair immediately.

She laughs in startlement, straightening her coat and tugging her stethoscope back on properly. “No problem – ah, it's you!” She smiles up at Sam, eyeing his full height. “Like being walked into by a small tree,” she says, but her smile is easy and unoffended.

His face warms and he scratches the back of his neck with a sheepish laugh. “Sorry,” he repeats.

“No worries,” she says. She starts walking around him and down the hallway, but at the same time she looks up and asks, “How's your brother feeling?” It's a clear invitation to walk with her as she gets to work.

Sam falls in beside her, having to take half-steps to stay in pace with her full stride, and for a second he can't think why the hell she'd be asking about Dean. Then he remembers how he'd identified Cas last night. “Oh,” he laughs. “He's a lot better. He's keeping food down now. And he's actually not, uh, my brother, he's...” He fumbles for whatever the hell Cas is to him, but brother is honestly the best word. “Brother-in-law?” Sam finishes, scrunching his nose. They're not actually married, but you couldn't tell that from looking at them.

Tessa gives a polite hum of interest. “Well, he's lucky to have you. Have you been here all day?”

“No,” Sam says, and it feels like a lie even though he did leave for those few hours this morning. It _feels_ like he's been here all day. “I guess I'll get back,” he says as they reach a nurses' station and Tessa reaches out to accept a stack of clipboards from the woman behind the counter.

“I'll be there as soon as I can,” Tessa promises.

“No rush,” Sam says, backing away.

He arrives back at Cas' room in time to get a faceful of Dean and Cas kissing. He sighs. Teasing or scolding them is getting tiresome, as is pretending to be shocked or leaving the room in an attempt to be polite. So he walks in and reclaims his seat, pulling out his phone. “I just saw the doctor,” he says, ignoring the way the two of them jerk apart with a wet little smack, looking vaguely guilty. “She'll be around soon.”

Cas shoves himself more upright in the bed, kicking the blanket into better alignment. “Good,” he says. “I want to go home.”

“Hey,” Dean says. “If she says you gotta stay, I'll handcuff you to the bed myself.”

Cas wrinkles his nose at Dean.

“Don't make that face at me,” Dean says, pulling the blanket up to Cas' chest. Cas bats it back down by a few inches. Sam thinks they're disgusting, but he thinks it in the nicest way possible.

There's a knock on the door after only twenty minutes or so. Sam and Cas have finally managed to get Dean off the topic of their flu adventures and started talking about the car show instead, so the knock interrupts Dean's effusive babble about all the classics he saw while up in Redding, and all the fellow car nuts he'd met.

Tessa opens the door and pokes her head in with a warm smile before coming all the way in. “All decent in here?” she asks, teasing.

“Hi,” Sam says, half-standing from his seat to greet her.

She waves him back while walking over to the bed. “Don't get up on my account. All right, Mr. Novak, how are you feeling?”

“Better,” says Cas. “I feel fine.”

“He's so dizzy he can't stand up,” Dean interjects.

“I feel _fine_ now,” Cas insists, glaring at Dean.

Tessa chuckles, flipping a page on the clipboard in her hands. “Let's just talk about the nausea for now. Where's that?”

“Nearly gone,” Cas says. “Only a twinge if I move suddenly.”

Tessa nods. “Good. Well, your numbers look excellent. I think if you're willing, you should try to eat a little something more and then go ahead and take your regular medication tonight. It may not ease your symptoms entirely until you've had a few days to readjust and get your equilibrium back.”

Cas nods. “Does that mean I can go home?”

She smiles warmly. “I bet you're climbing the walls. Yes, I think you're fine to be discharged tonight – it'll be another hour or so to get you all processed and released, is that all right?”

Cas sighs and rolls his head back, but he says, “That's fine.”

“I'll have someone bring you something else to snack on,” Tessa says.

“Not the soup,” Cas shudders.

Tessa laughs. “Oh, I know,” she says sympathetically. “The cafeteria makes a mean breakfast, though – sure you don't want to spend the night?”

Cas makes a pathetic noise.

“I'll get Becky to bring you some crackers,” Tessa laughs. “Maybe some pudding.”

“I want pudding,” Dean chimes up.

“Healthy people have to get their own pudding,” Tessa jokes, writing on her clipboard. She finishes, then looks up at Dean. “Another brother-in-law?”

Sam chokes and coughs a laugh into his fist. Cas squints in mild confusion. “Uh,” Dean says. “Boyfriend.”

Tessa blinks. “Oh!” None of them miss her eyes flickering to Dean's hands, which are ringless. “I'm sorry, I thought -”

“Sorry,” says Sam. “They're, like – common law married or something.”

“We are not!” Dean objects.

“We probably are,” Cas says mildly.

Tessa breaks into another warm smile. With her blue-black hair, pale skin, and elfin features, hers is a face that seems to lend itself to coldness and intimidation – but her smile erases all of that. “Well, this sounds like an ongoing debate,” she says, grinning. “I'd better leave you to it.”

Sam thanks her again as she leaves, inexplicably feeling better about life and the world and just... everything, really. She has that way about her. Some people do. Way, way back when Sam was tiny, John had once dropped Sam and Dean off at the house of a friend of Mary's – a woman named Missouri with a sweet voice and an endless collection of different teas, who told Dean not to put his feet on the table and gave them chores to do and baked cookies for them when they were finished. The brothers had only spent ten days there, and never met Missouri again, but Sam remembers that time clear as crystal. For no particular reason other than her smile, Tessa reminds him of it.

“Can I have clothes?” Cas asks, tugging pathetically on his baby blue gown.

Dean smirks at him, reaching out to straighten it. “Nah, I like your new assless fashion choices,” he says. Cas groans at him.

There isn't anything for Cas to wear except what he wore into the emergency room yesterday, sweat-musty pajamas that smell faintly of Lysol and sour bile. Cas shudders at the sight of them. Dean's luggage is outside in the Impala, but all his clothes from his weekend trip are worn and dirty as well. Cas says he won't mind wearing Dean's laundry, but Sam offers to go back to the apartment and pick up a change anyway.

“The cats probably think they're going to starve to death,” Sam says. “And I'll clean the litter for you.”

Cas sighs in relief. “Dean, I think I'm going to marry your brother instead.”

“Wait, cleaning up a little cat shit is all it takes?”

Sam leaves them bickering good-naturedly and drives to Cas' building with the windows rolled down, letting the cold rush of air blast away any clinging remains of worry about the events of the weekend. When he gets inside the apartment, the first thing he does is push all the windows open as far as they'll go. It's chilly outside, but the stuffy, still feeling of being in a sickroom starts to lift as soon as the fresh air winds its way inside.

The cats are crazed to be fed, as Sam expected. He leaves them to tear into their wet food and upholds his promise of cleaning their box. It reminds him why he doesn't want cats. He makes a face, tossing the bag in the trash – yep, definitely a dog for him. A pet who'll actually be happy to see him, instead of just mauling his hands while he tries to give them the food that is the only thing they care about.

But he pets Lady in apology for his uncharitable thoughts, and she purrs like the Impala's engine under his touch, still facedown in her bowl. He supposes they're all right, for furry little balls of murder.

He steps into the master bedroom and realizes he doesn't quite know where to look for appropriate clothes. He peeks into the closet – suits, button-downs, jeans, a jumble of shoes on the floor. He hums and decides to check the dresser instead, thinking of sweatpants and t-shirts, something comfortable and easy to put on.

He shrewdly opens drawers from the bottom up, thinking that if there's anything mentally scarring in here, it's probably going to be in a top drawer. Thankfully he doesn't run into any damning evidence, just socks and underwear and a drawer of wadded band shirts he recognizes as Dean's. He pulls out one of these – Black Sabbath. It'll do. He pulls the shirts to the side, but there aren't any pants to be found. His knuckles knock against something hard, though, and he jerks his hand back, thinking of all the kinds of things Dean might keep hidden in his dresser that Sam really doesn't want to know about.

But what he knocked into is just a small black box. Sam pokes it, picks it up and turns it over. It's velvet. There's a hinge on one side. He frowns at it for a second and then it clicks.

Oh. Oh! _Holy shit._ He's been joking about them for nearly a year now, but still somehow it's a shock to put two and two together and realize that Dean's hiding a fucking _ring box_ in his pajama drawer.

Sam grins like a loon and shoves the box down to the bottom of the drawer, pushing all the shirts back over it. He can't help laughing to himself as he opens one more drawer and finds a folded stack of soft drawstring pants. He's still giddy with revelation as he shoves pants, shirt, boxers and socks into the nearest bag.

He should really forget what he saw – he shouldn't be so happy; it's not like anything's even happened yet. He didn't open the box, so it's not like he even knows for sure that there's a ring there, or if there is, that it's meant for what he thinks it's meant for. But still he can't help wondering how long Dean's been thinking about this, if he has a plan or if he's still working up the nerve. Sam hopes he doesn't do anything too dramatic or stupid.

On the drive back, Sam forces himself to imagine Cas saying no, just to sober himself up. There's no guarantee, right? Dean wanting it doesn't equal Cas agreeing. But it's frankly inconceivable to Sam that it won't happen. He _wants_ it to happen. He's never seen Dean so happy in his life, and the thought of Dean losing what he's built in the last two years is... _devastating_ to a degree Sam can't even cope with in the hypothetical.

Sam's heart thrums happily at the thought of his big brother getting hitched. And oh, yes, he's going to make _the_ single most embarrassing speech in the history of best man speeches. And even if Dean returns the favor if or when Sam ever gets married, Sam will still have won because Sam got to do it first.

Sam tries to stop grinning while he walks through the hospital. The door to Cas' room is open by a few inches when he reaches it – a nurse or tech must not have pulled it all the way closed – and he pauses outside, schooling his face into a more normal expression. Unfortunately this means he's also just standing there listening when Dean's voice speaks up, sounding choked.

“Damn it, Cas,” Dean says.

“I'm sorry, I didn't -”

“You stole my thunder,” Dean interrupts, sounding slightly hysterical.

“I'm sorry?”

Sam freezes, pinching his lips together to keep from laughing out loud.

“Of course I'm gonna fucking marry you, you idiot -”

“Dean -”

“- I was going to ask you in two weeks -”

“- what?”

“- and there was a whole thing, and now -”

Cas laughs once, sounding just as slightly unhinged as Dean does.

“- in the goddamn _hospital_ -”

“You can still ask me-”

“- with no _pants_ on -”

“- but now you know I'll say yes.”

Dean pauses for a breath. “What?” he asks.

“Ask me in two weeks,” Cas repeats. “And you don't have to be nervous because you know what the answer is.”

“Oh.” Dean pauses for a long moment. “What if we just. Tell people in two weeks?”

“- okay.”

“Two weeks to adjust, you know.”

“Yes.”

“Two weeks...”

“Dean, I said yes.”

Dean's breath whooshes out. “Yeah, you did. And I did. Fuck.”

Sam, meanwhile, is leaning against the doorframe, hand clasped over his mouth, holding back laughter so hard that a tear finally squeezes out the corner of his eye and trickles down the side of his nose. In his desperate need to take a breath, he has to let his hand loosen; to his absolute mortification, he snorts on his explosive inhale. He can't stop the next exhale from coming out as a bark of uncontrollable laughter.

Steps immediately come over to the door and Dean yanks it the rest of the way open. He looks shellshocked, somewhere between hysterical and angry and terrified and annoyed. “Goddammit, Sammy!”

Sam wheezes more incoherent laughter and squeezes past Dean into the room. He tosses the bag towards Cas, who's so startled he misses the catch.

“Sam -” Dean starts again, his blatant mix of emotions sinking down from annoyance to alarm.

Sam crushes Dean into a hug. “You big moron,” Sam wheezes. “You complete jerk.”

Dean relaxes into his arms and hugs him back, tight. “Fuck you,” he replies weakly.

“Congratulations,” Sam says.

Dean responds by pulling his head down and giving him a thorough noogie that Sam wriggles away from, laughing and scrubbing salt streaks off his face.

Sam looks at Cas, who's sitting there on the hospital bed, bright red, looking like a deer in the headlights. “I guess you can tell everyone _else_ in two weeks,” Sam says, grinning stupidly.

Cas' mouth twitches up into a helpless smile and he ducks his head.

Half an hour later, Cas is dressed in clean clothes and picking at the bit of medical tape holding a cotton ball to his elbow where the IV was. He still wobbles on his feet, but an orderly brings a wheelchair to push him out at least to the hospital doors. “I can walk,” Cas complains, but the orderly gives him a slight shake of the head and an eye roll, and says, “Hospital policy.”

They pass Tessa as they're about to get in the elevator. Sam waves and grins brightly. She smiles back. It's only a half-second interaction, but it's nice to feel like she cares.

As they cross the lobby to the front doors and Cas is finally allowed to stand on his own, Sam glances around the place. With Bobby home and Cas well again, Sam sincerely hopes he doesn't have to see the inside of a hospital again for a long time. But... he has to admit, it's not the worst place in the world. The people who work here can't help that it creates so many bad memories, but there's plenty of good, too. It's just life, but concentrated.

Sam turns back to see Cas leaning on Dean, walking a little bit drunkenly out through the front doors into the dark evening, haloed by the glow of the streetlights in the parking lot.

Everything's going to be okay.

\---


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last timestamp.

_May_

 

“Mail.”

An envelope flops onto the back of Cas' hand, causing him to typo in the middle of a sentence. He swipes the envelope to the side and casts Dean a glare.

Dean gives him an innocent grin and walks by Cas into the kitchen. “What's for dinner?” Dean asks.

Cas purses his lips and concentrates on finishing the last thought he'd had before it leaks out of his head. His fingers fly over the keyboard. He ignores Dean opening the fridge and complaining at its contents. He's almost got it... almost... and _there,_ a paragraph done! His work for the evening is complete – at least, his job-related work. Now he just has to feed a whiny mechanic.

“I was thinking we could go out,” Cas calls, saving his files and closing his laptop. He stands, shaking out his hands, uncramping his wrists from working at the keyboard for nearly two hours. The envelope next to it catches his eye and he picks it up. It's a big envelope, thick with multiple sheets of paper, and the return address appears to be some law office. Cas frowns at it.

“Wouldn't object to that,” Dean calls back.

Cas tears open the envelope and pulls out the contents.

“What were you thinking?” Dean asks, meandering around the kitchen. “There's a new Thai place, Sam keeps talking about it. I mean, I'm feelin' a burger, but you know I'm... always...”

Dean rounds the corner back into the living room, and stops at the sight of Castiel. Cas knows how he must look, wide-eyed and clammy and probably pale as a sheet – he could swear he felt it when the blood plummetted from his face.

“Cas?” Dean asks, alarmed, striding over.

“It's,” Cas whispers, and swallows to moisten his suddenly-dry throat. “It's, um. Anna.”

Dean stops right in front of Cas. Cas looks up at him, searching and lost. Dean reaches out and holds his elbow lightly, an anchor. “Anna?” Dean asks, and then his brow clears. “Shit, your _sister_ Anna?”

“She,” Cas says, flipping the lawyer's letter over to the second page, but there's just a signature. He looks back at the body of the text again. “She found us. Me. She wants to -” He fumbles out the second item from the envelope. It's a smaller, square envelope, to hold a card. Dean takes the lawyer's letter and scans it while Cas tears open the card with shaking fingers. It's a personalized blank, a simple, pale blue with a small hydrangea motif, and it has a curlicue A. M. in the bottom corner. He opens it.

Dean takes him around the waist and leads him to the sofa, where he sits without thinking and just reads. He reads the card over and over, trying to take in the words first, then just looking at her signature. Then looking at the top, where she's written his name – the letters of his name, so familiar but suddenly so loaded, the strokes and dots written out by one of the few people in the world who knows everything about the world that name came from. _Castiel._ He traces the letters with his fingertip. His name is written so formally, every letter picked out in her fine handwriting. Her name is a swoop and a scrawl, deeply ingrained, her identity. It's only signed Anna. Anael is gone.

“Cas?” Dean asks quietly after a while, and Cas realizes he's been stroking Cas' back. The pressure between his shoulderblades is grounding. He takes a deep breath.

“Anna,” Cas says hoarsely, “would like to meet me.”

\---

“It's gonna be fine,” Dean says, straightening Castiel's tie.

They've just stepped out of the Impala in a shaded corner of a strip mall's parking lot. It's not the most glamorous location for a family reunion, but Cas had agreed with Dean that a well-lit, well-populated, open area would be for the best. There's a Greek restaurant on the corner of the line of shops – prime real estate for a patio with small tables and comfortable chairs under huge green umbrellas.

Cas had replied to Anna's request directly, instead of through her lawyer. Her card had included an email address, and he'd suggested lunch at the restaurant. She was only going to be in town for a weekend, apparently. Their exchange of emails had been brief, strained, overly formal. Without any sense of each other as people, there was no way for mere words to contain any inflection, any emotion.

“The tie is overkill, I'm telling you,” Dean says. “And it's too warm for the coat.”

Cas pulls the ends of the sleeves into his sweaty palms and balls his fists around them. “I know,” he says. “I need...”

Dean plants a swift kiss over his right eye and says, “I know. I'm just saying, it's a nice spring day, no obligations, no pressure. You want to bail, just tap out. I know what to look for.”

Cas relaxes under his touch. “Okay,” he says, mostly to himself. “Okay.” He swallows. “Dean?”

“Hm.”

“If I – I don't want you to think – could I ask that you be, maybe, less physically affectionate? Just for. Just at first.”

After a beat, Dean says, “Yeah, okay.” His hands slide away from Cas' arm and chest, but he leaves a couple of fingers lightly hooked around Cas' wrist.

Cas looks into his eyes, pleading and apologetic. “It's not that I don't want her to – it's not that I care – I _want_ her to know who you are, I -”

“Cas,” Dean says, low and serious. Cas catches his breath before he starts to hyperventilate. “It's _okay_ that you care what she thinks. She should get to know you before she gets to know us. And I ain't worried about us.” Dean gestures between them. “Listen, if my dad was still alive – I can't even comprehend telling him I'm planning on marrying a dude in four months. I don't even know how I'd start. So, whatever you need me to do.”

Cas whoofs out a breath. “Right now I need you to kiss me,” he mutters, staring at Dean's throat. “And then I might need you to bodily drag me over there, because I've lost all feeling in my feet.”

Dean chuckles and leans in for the requested kiss. Cas takes comfort in the gesture and tries to absorb all of Dean's strength and assurance that he can before Dean pulls away.

“Okay,” Dean says, putting his hands in his pockets. “You ready for this? 'Cause I'm hungry.”

Cas laughs. Despite his fears, his feet do still work. He puts one foot in front of the other, practicing deep breathing all the way across the giant parking lot, until the Greek place comes into view. He takes one more deep breath as they approach, scanning the heads – it's a little after peak lunch rush, so there are plenty of empty tables, most still waiting to be bussed, but a few are clean and a few people are alone...

In her last email, Anna had written, _I have red hair._ As if Cas didn't know that. Her fiery hair haunts the dreams he still sometimes has about those days. She had also written, _I will be wearing a gray coat._

The gray is irrelevant beside the red, and Castiel recognizes the red immediately. His feet stop working again. Dean pauses, looks at him, but doesn't offer a hand.

It's like a dream – but not like the dreams he has, the real ones, memories really, because in those she's as she _was,_ a wiry short girl with teeth too big for her face and arms like steel and lips thinned in anger. Some freckles here, some zits there, and her flaming mane usually pinned up under a severe gray cap. She tore her skirts, sometimes on purpose. She skinned her knees and apologized to no one. She raised her voice. Once upon a time, Castiel had worshipped her.

She _left him there._

As if feeling his stare, Anael looks up and meets her brother's eyes. They're the same blue, the very same.

Cas feels some strength return to his spine, some feeling return to his legs. He starts walking towards her while she pushes back from her table and stands. Is he imagining that she looks dazed, stunned? Is he projecting if he thinks he sees fear written huge all over her face?

The distance reduces to a few yards, then a few feet. Then Cas is standing in front of the sister he hasn't seen for nearly a quarter of a century, and he can't think of a damn thing to say.

Her tongue flickers out to wet her lips and she says, “Castiel?”

He says, “Anael.” Testing.

Then with hardly any warning she's striding to him, arms rising for a hug. He has a moment of clarity in which he realizes he could step back, shun her, dodge out of the way. He glimpses the future if he does it – a future not so different from the present, because it would still be empty of her, but the loss would be raw and fresh instead of old and scarred. And it's _her_ – despite everything, despite years and years, perceived betrayals and deliberate silence, she's still just his big sister, and he wants to know her again.

He steps into the hug, hands fisting against the back of her gray pea coat, and he finds that he's taller than her by a few inches. She was taller, way back then. Her hair is the same, long and wavy, blood-red streaked with glints of orange and gold in the bright sun, the same color that made other children in the church whisper that she had the devil in her. Even something about her smell is familiar, although she couldn't have been wearing perfume back in the church, where frivolities like that were sins.

With a thick and watery-sounding laugh, Anna pulls away. She steps back, swiping her face and looking apologetic. “I'm sorry,” she says.

“No, it's...” Cas trails off, hands dropping awkwardly back to his sides.

“No one's called me that, since.” She clears her throat. “It's just -”

“Anna,” Cas says, and it feels familiar and welcome on his tongue. He decides Anael is well and truly gone, and he won't say the name again. He smiles at her, a little hesitant, but it's a real smile.

She smiles back. “Anna Milton,” she says.

He nods.

“You kept yours. It was easy to find you.” She says it unsurely, questioning.

“There aren't a lot of Castiels running around,” he agrees without explaining.

She swallows. Gestures back at her table. “Should we -?”

“Oh,” says Cas, “yes.” He glances over his shoulder at Dean, who's standing a polite distance away. “I have a... friend.”

Anna looks past Cas at Dean. “Oh, I didn't see – hello.”

She holds out her hand and Dean shakes it quickly. “Dean. I'm here for moral support,” he says smoothly. “Just in case, you know.”

She nods and looks understanding. “I had – have – no idea how to do this, myself.”

They take the table, situated nicely in the center of the umbrella's shadow, and a waiter comes around and gets drink orders. There's already a stack of menus on the table – Anna had been waiting before she looked.

“Aw, what is all this,” Dean mutters, flipping through his menu. He hasn't been to this place before.

Cas snorts. “You like gyros,” he points out.

“I like that _one_ place's gyros,” Dean says. “And it's a deli in a gas station, man, how authentic is it, really?”

“Philistine.”

Anna looks between them as they banter, looking a little uncertain but mainly amused. When they order, she gets a dolmas plate and a side of taboulleh. Apropos of nothing, she blurts, “I'm vegetarian.”

Cas looks at her. “Oh?”

“I just mean -” She waves a hand vaguely. “In the interest of getting to know. Me.”

Cas smiles. He fidgets for a moment, then offers, “I teach.”

“I saw. Department page on Stanford's website. Anthropology?”

“Cultural, mainly,” Cas says. “And some introduction to forensic. What do you do?”

“Oh, I'm -” She tucks her hair behind her ear and laughs sheepishly. “I'm an artist. I majored in art history and my day job's in a gallery, but I sell pieces too.”

“Really? What kind of art?”

“Painting,” she says, “and some stained glass work.”

Cas thinks of the old church. No windows. Stained glass, color and light and beauty, was another of those sins of worldly pleasure, like perfume, like silk or art or fiction.

“I'd love to see it,” Cas says.

She nods. Her ears and cheeks are red. “I read a couple of your papers,” she says. “Some of the journals, they have issues online.”

Cas feels his own cheeks getting hot. “Oh. Ah.”

“You're an amazing writer.”

“Um.”

“Why anthropology?”

“Oh.” He fiddles with a napkin. “Humans. People being people. History, the world. You know, what we – what we missed out on.”

Anna nods, watching him. “I get it,” she says quietly.

He clears his throat. “So – Milton -?” He glances at her hands but she isn't wearing any rings.

“My parents,” she says quickly. “Foster parents.”

He nods. “How was it, after...?” He isn't sure if he can dig this deep. This might be overstepping.  
“Hard,” she says without hesitation. “I was angry for a long time. I bounced between a lot of houses that didn't know how to deal with me. I got in fights.”

He can't help but smile. That's the Anna he knows.

“The Miltons got me when I was getting too tired to keep fighting. They helped me through a lot of shit. Sorry. Depression – running away. All these harebrained plans I had to go back and break you out, like a prison break. I guess some of the cousins, too, but I really wanted to get you. My baby brother. I was responsible for you and I...” She covers her mouth with her hand, shakes her head in silence.

He didn't know that. He swallows hard. “I missed you,” he says. His voice sounds wrong. He clears his throat. “I would've... I wanted you to get me. I missed you.”

They sit in awkward, strained silence until the food comes out. Anna picks at her grape leaves and rice, and eats tiny forkfuls of tabbouleh. Dean minds his own business, tucking into a gyro and declaring it to be not as good as the gas station deli's, but acceptable. Cas kicks him under the table. Dean snorts. It coaxes a smile out of Anna again, and the mood lightens.

“So, um. Dean,” Anna says, putting down her fork to reach for her water. “You're Castiel's friend? How did you meet?”

Cas flushes hot; this is a problem they often have, telling the “how we met” story. How the two of them met was not remotely G-rated nor family-friendly. They have to do a lot of glossing and patchwork to make the story tellable.

“At Gabriel's bachelor party,” Dean says. “Have you contacted him?”

Good deflection, Cas thinks.

Anna shakes her head. “Uhh – not exactly,” she says. “I know – sorry, but I do actually know that he hired an investigator to find me. Years ago. I made it clear that I didn't want contact and he left it alone. So I don't really know how to – reopen that line. And I didn't really have much of a connection to him when we were kids, you know?”

“He's much the same,” Cas says. “Never give him candy, and never let him tell you about New Year's Eve parties.”

She giggles. “Well, I saw what he does for a living.” She clears her throat. “It's...”

“Artistic?” Cas supplies.

She laughs. A real, full laugh. Cas feels himself lighten all over, the last of his unease untangling from around his guts, leaving him free to breath deep and full. He joins in the laughter at their brother's expense and catches Dean smiling at him from the corner of his eye. He nudges Dean's foot with his own again, apologizing for the earlier kick, and finds that his appetite has finally emerged from hiding. He starts taking real bites of his lamb and rice, actually tasting the spices this time. Anna does the same with her dolmas.

They fall into a real conversation, at last – about things they like, places they've been, people they've met. It comes so easily, after all that hesitation and worry; in some ways it feels like they were never apart, or like they were just waiting, although they didn't know it, for this chance to share their stories. Anna tells Cas about traveling to France for a study-abroad program that was meant to last one semester, and how she didn't come back for four years. She samples her fluent French for him and he's duly impressed; he samples some ancient Sumerian for her and she wrinkles her nose.

“It may not be the language of romance -” Cas retorts.

“It sounds like you're gargling toads,” Dean says. He's finished his gyro and moved on to a gooey, flakey, pistachio-laden piece of baklava, while Anna and Cas nurse coffees instead.

“Shut up,” Cas says. He's gotten so comfortable, he forgets himself, and says, “We tried to learn sign language when Claire was little, all of us together, but it never really stuck.”

Anna's brow furrows. “Who's -?”

For a moment Cas sits in stunned silence. He hadn't meant to mention Claire. He – he supposes, though, that Claire is Anna's neice, and Anna might like to know that she's an aunt now. But explaining that means explaining... so many things.

Cas takes a deep breath and swallows back the thickness in his throat. He makes a decision. He would like for Anna to remain in his life, and if that's going to happen, he will not start the reparations with lies of ommission. He reaches the foot or so across the table to Dean's free hand; Dean holds it, twining fingers, giving Cas a startled look.

“Dean isn't my friend,” Cas says firmly. He has to get it out quick – rip off the Band-Aid. “He's my fiance.”

“Also friend,” Dean says.

Cas rolls his eyes slightly. “Fine, yes, he is my friend, but I'm marrying him, so that's. What it is.”

Anna stares at the two of them for a moment. Cas is frozen inside and out; it seems like his heart stops. Then, like dawn spilling over a horizon, Anna starts to grin.

She pushes back her chair and says, “Excuse me, Dean, I need to give my stupid brother another hug.”

Dean laughs and pushes Cas to stand up. The hug is warmer and less desperate this time, broken by Anna's laughing against Cas' shoulder, and Cas allowing himself to grin into her hair. “I'm so happy for you,” Anna says, muffled by Cas' coat. “I'm so proud of you.”

“I missed you,” Cas repeats, but this time it's about the promise of being together again, instead of accusation about the time apart.

When Anna pulls back, she punches Cas on the arm. It's very light, still uncertain, but the fact that she does it at all makes Cas warm all the way through. “I _thought_ there was something,” she says, smiling at Dean. “I wan't going to ask, but.”

Cas snorts and Dean laughs, leaning back in his seat. “We don't get much practice at being discreet,” he says.

“Good,” Anna says firmly, going back to her seat. “And Castiel – the Miltons? They're Amy and Bill. Ms. Billie Mae.”

Cas opens his mouth, closes it. Opens it again, says, “Oh.”

She grins sunnily at him. “How long?” She gestures between them. “Is Claire yours -?”

“No.” Cas clears his throat. “I married in the church, at seventeen. Do you remember Amelia?”

“Oh.” Anna's grin falters. “Yes, a little. She read. I liked her.”

“I did too,” says Cas, “though not in that way. Married, we could get our own house. You know how it was. They thought, you know. I owned her then.”

Anna nods, her smile gone.

“After a while we had enough money to move, go to school. Start-” Cas hesitates. “Start a family.”

“And...”

“We had Claire,” Cas says. “I have a daughter. Your neice. You're an aunt.”

“Oh,” says Anna, looking startled. “Oh!” Clearly the relation hadn't occurred to her.

“The doctrines washed out more the more time and distance we had from the church,” Cas says. “We sort of – realized, concurrently, that we didn't need to keep pretending. So we divorced. We have joint custody. We're friends.”

Anna's smile returns. “That's good.”

“She's giving me away at the wedding,” Cas says, jerking his thumb at Dean.

“They're still a little too close,” Dean says, eyes twinkling.

Anna beams. “Where will it be, here?”

Cas nods. “Outside,” he says. “I've had enough of institutions, religious or otherwise. We're trying to pick a park. Maybe a beach.”

“I can't imagine...” Anna gazes at Cas. “You're so big, you know. Hell of a voice. The last time I saw you, you were -” She holds out a hand only a couple of feet from the ground.

Cas scoffs. “I was bigger than that.”

Dean barks laughter.

“Not by much,” Anna teases.

“Come,” Cas blurts. “To the wedding.”

Anna opens her mouth.

“I mean, we haven't sent invitations yet. I could send you one. Would you want one?”

“Yes,” Anna says. “Yes, absolutely.”

Cas chews his lower lip. “You don't have to be involved. Just come.”

“I want to,” she says insistently, leaning forward. “Castiel. I want to be there.”

He gives the table a helpless smile, holding back a swell of emotion that's stuffed his head up so much he can't speak or think clearly.

“When?” Anna asks.

Dean takes over, since Cas is busy studying the tabletop. “Early August. It was gonna be closer to when we met, but then we figured, let's not do all this mess in the middle of the school year. There's enough going on then.”

Anna nods. “I can do August.”

There's a long, slightly tense pause as they all come to the realization that they've been sitting here for well over an hour and a half, and that, having finished dessert and coffee, they've run out of scripted excuses to continue sitting and talking. Cas is reluctant to think about the work he has to get done this afternoon; he's dazed, a little floaty, and he doesn't quite know how he's going to feel after he parts from Anna with no guarantee of seeing her again until August – whether the connection he feels now will turn out to have been a fluke, and fade as quickly as it bloomed.

He hates the thought. Part of him he thought he'd buried a long time ago is scratching to be let out again – everything before Amelia, before sparring with Samandriel, before his mother's death. That pale and distant part of his life where the only anchor had been Anna. It's the most alien and inhuman part of him, and Anna's the only one who understands that. (Perhaps Gabriel. But the elder two Novaks and the younger two had always been divided by the invisible wall of their fathers' affection. Two received the world on a silver platter; two wouldn't have known their father from a ghost.)

Anna sits up straighter, startling Cas' eyes up to her. She sets her empty coffee cup down with purpose, looking determined. “You know, I'm here this weekend for a student art show,” she says. “Part of my job is acquisitions and my gallery's always trying to find new talent. It's tomorrow evening. I have a plus one.”

Cas' chest tightens and he smiles at her, almost shy. “I'd love to.”

“It's at six,” Anna says. “Should I – can I maybe... meet you for dinner before, or...?”

Cas has to clear his throat before he can say, “There's a Mexican place by campus – they have these fresh tortillas... and vegetarian options, I think, I can check -”

“Yes,” Anna interrupts. “Absolutely.”

Cas just looks at her for a moment, feeling stupid with happiness. “I'll see you there,” he says, finally.

As they stand to make their goodbyes, Dean makes no attempt to be inconspicuous about holding Cas' hand. Cas is grateful for the grounding touch, because he's verging on tears, and he feels embarrassed by his very existence. Dean slips his hand around Cas' waist as they turn to leave. Cas can't help relaxing against his solid warmth.

“Castiel,” Anna calls.

Cas turns back one last time.

She stands there in her jeans and gray pea coat, hands in her pockets, blazing hair tousled by the light breeze, looking every bit like the girl she used to be, and nothing like her at all. She looks like healing. She looks like family.

“I missed you, too,” she calls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it. I'm bowing out of the Florence verse. The urge to write domestic fluff will surely still hit me with its usual frequency, don't worry; I'll just be attempting to create new universes from now on, because this one has run its course. It's done me unbelievable amounts of good to spend the last year writing and thinking about this series of stories - it's carried me through some really rough patches, it got me writing again after a few dry years, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly gratifying. Thank you all so much for reading, and keep an eye on me, because the Destiel folder on my computer is far from empty. :D

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be the last installment of the Florence verse, guys, and I am so incredibly happy that so many people have enjoyed these stories. Started as pure domestic fluff wish-fulfillment, they've turned into an outlet that's helped me through some rough mental places and gotten me back onto the writing wagon after having fallen off it for over 5 years.
> 
> I try not to post WIPs, but I'm still hammering out the dents in the last couple chapters. Expect two more main chapters here, maybe a timestamp, and then I might make another post with the bits and pieces that didn't go anywhere but are cute timestamps on their own.
> 
> ETA 4-17-17: LOL, WELL, Florence strikes again. There's a part 7 now, as you can see. It's pure PWP, but it fit in the 'verse, so enjoy!


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